The high-stakes College English Test (CET), developed, administered, and reformed over the last 20 years, has received great attention in the aspect of washback on teaching and learning from previous research. Very few studies explored its consequences in the workplace domain--being used as a screening lever. This research aimed to 1) compare…

Language placement tests (LPTs) are used to assess students' proficiency in a progressive manner in the target language. Based on their performance, students are assigned to stepped language courses. These tests are usually considered low stakes because they do not have significant consequences in students' lives, which is perhaps the reason why…

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) oral proficiency interview -- computer (OPIc) testing system represents an ambitious effort in language assessment: Assessing oral proficiency in over a dozen languages, on the same scale, from virtually anywhere at any time. Especially for users in contexts where multiple foreign…

The study aimed to investigate teachers' and students' perceptions towards traditional and alternative types of assessment within a classroom context of an English course provided for English-majoring students at tertiary level. A combination of traditional and alternative assessment tools was implemented in the study. The researcher developed…

The first and most crucial step towards developing a sustainable curriculum for instructors teaching English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) is a needs analysis. Therefore, the main aim of conducting this study was to investigate the in-service needs of language instructors and content specialists teaching ESAP and to spot the differences…

There has been an increased level of attention devoted to the consequences of test use in recent years; however, the majority of washback studies focused on teaching. In fact, little research has addressed learners' perspectives to analyze possible determinants of test results. To address this issue, this study first compared the pre-and-post…

One consequence of test use in the English-language teaching community is the negative washback of tests on teaching and learning. Test preparation courses are often seen as part of the more general issue of washback. IELTS and TOEFL iBT tests, focusing on communicative competence, are anticipated to have positive washback effect on how English is…

Surveys the development of language tests toward authenticity and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of indirect and direct (authentic) language tests. Discusses the difficulty of applying appropriate psychometric measures to tests using real-life language, and the large number of tests variables which interfere with the authenticity of…

Language assessment is reviewed as a technology which could become more effective for classroom use through school-based development and greater use of alternatives to standardized testing. (Author)

To study the adequacy of the brief oral examination format as a basis for assessing oral skills, the study compared samples of 15-minute oral exams with 3-hour written exam results by the same students. The resultant average size of oral samples was about 77% of that of written samples, with good comparability, leading to useful conclusions about…

Some of the issues, history, and approaches in the testing of second language writing skills are reviewed. It is argued that because writing serves many important functions in the lives of individuals and activities that speech cannot do equally well, it is time to stop viewing writing as secondary to speech and to accord it equal attention. Most…

The purpose of this research was to compare two different forms of a placement test in French as a second language at the post-secondary level, a conventional test and a computerized test. First, expectations regarding a placement test as a measure of general proficiency are discussed and principles of adaptive testing that have been used to…

Ten groups (2-5 members each) of tenth-grade Israeli English-as-a-Second-Language students took first a group quiz and then individual quizzes on the same material. Comparison of the results showed that, especially for weaker students, group work and group grades offered some advantages over individual work and assessment. (CNP)

Six methods of equating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) test scores for samples consisting of the usual groups of examinees and groups controlled for native language representation were evaluated in terms of scale stability. The equating methods included three item response theory (IRT) variants (fixed b's scaling, a one-parameter…

A study investigated the effects of specific guidelines in the taking and rating of tests of summarizing ability. The subjects were 63 native-Hebrew-speaking students enrolled in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) courses at the Seminar Hakibbutzim Teacher Training College in Tel Aviv (Israel). The subjects were given two sets of instructions…