This paper investigated the effect of a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' self-perceived communication competence (SPCC), communication anxiety (CA), and soft skills. The participants were 157 university students from Japan, Türkiye, and Spain who completed various tasks and…

Although the IELTS speaking test assesses English verbal-communication competence accurately and reliably, its traditional, retroactive scoring framework stops short of providing detailed diagnostic information about individual test-takers' specific domains of proficiency or deficiency. This study employed a cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA)…

This study aimed to adapt the Plurilingual and Pluricultural Competence scale (PPC) to the Russian-speaking population and to assess its psychometric properties. Five hundred and sixty-four undergraduate students from Western, Central, and Caucasian regions of Russia and Kazakhstan participated in the study. Internal consistency, factorial,…

This study aims to investigate ChatGPT's ability to comprehend input from nonnative speakers, specifically those learning English as a second language, with Japanese speakers serving as the model population. The experiment examines how ChatGPT evaluates the difficulty levels of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), which is…

Intercultural Competence Assessment (ICA) has recently become a central issue in applied linguistics in general, and language testing and assessment in particular. The present paper aims to investigate the difference between native and non-native assessment experts' beliefs about incorporating ICA in the Language Proficiency Assessment (LPA).…

This study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of ELF communication strategy instruction for university students' communicative competence. Conceptual studies on ELF-informed pedagogy stress the importance of teaching strategies, which promote mutual understanding and positive relationships, but few empirical pedagogical studies exist.…

A language 'test' is a systematic procedure for observing a person's behavior and describing it with the aid of a numerical scale or category system (Cronbach LJ 1971: 26). A test cannot be based on a selection of items chosen on linguistic grounds alone, and that to devise an effective test, it is necessary to specify how an examinee requires to…

This study aimed to investigate whether and how willingness to communicate, communication in English anxiety, behavioural inhibition and action predict perceived second language (L2) fluency. The study also looked at whether L2 proficiency moderates the strength of relationships between these affective factors and L2 perceived fluency. One hundred…

In its 40th year, "Language Testing" journal has served as the flagship journal for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the field of language testing and assessment. This viewpoint piece, written from the perspective of an emerging scholar, discusses two possible future trends based on evidence going back to the very first issue…

Studies have shown that raising L2 learners' metaphor awareness contributes to the acquisition of figurative language, which fosters students' development of language skills. However, the instruments measuring metaphor awareness, in the majority of relevant research, did not seem to have undergone proper methodological procedures for checking…

The shift of focus from a cognitive to social view has drawn the attention of second language assessment researchers to delve into interactional competence as an intriguing topic in paired oral tests. To fill the gap on how interactional patterns compare across L1 and L2 interactions this study was specifically set to explore and compare 45 paired…

This manuscript reports on a study carried out at a public university in southeast Mexico aimed to determine whether changes in the instructional design of an online English course benefit students' oral communicative competence. The research followed a quantitative quasi-experimental design that involved two groups of students. One of them took a…

Communicative competence for people who use augmentative and alternative communication consists of four interrelated domains: linguistic, strategic, social, and operational. Ongoing assessment and progress monitoring within these domains are crucial to (a) providing information to teach targeted skills in a manner contextualized within the…

In 1988 and 2006, "Applied Linguistics" published Low's and Littlemore and Low's seminal theoretical accounts of second language (L2) metaphoric competence (MC). Meanwhile, attempts to elicit metaphor-related skills/competences have been mixed. Instrumentation has varied in reliability, been limited in scope, and used arguably flawed…

The aim of this research is to explore the effect of implementing the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach on the speaking ability of students-. The sample size for this study comprises 46 students representing the introvert class and the extrovert class, selected based on the results obtained from the distribution of questionnaires. To…