Typical print formatting provides no information regarding the linguistic features of a text, although texts vary considerably with respect to grammatical complexity and readability. Complex texts may be particularly challenging for individuals with weak language knowledge, such as English language learners. This paper investigates the usefulness…

In this research report, we describe the design and empirical findings for a large-scale study of essay writing ability with approximately 2,500 high school students in Germany and Switzerland on the basis of 2 tasks with 2 associated prompts, each from a standardized writing assessment whose scoring involved both human and automated components.…

Nonverbal and other visual cues are well established as a critical component of human communication. Under most circumstances, visual information is available to aid in the comprehension and interpretation of spoken language. Citing these facts, many L2 assessment researchers have studied video-mediated listening tests through score comparisons…

Prosody communicates pragmatic meaning far beyond that which is evident at the surface level of an utterance and can pose challenges to learners' pragmatic comprehension. The current study investigated how second language (L2) English learners made decisions about speaker intent when communicated through prosody. Seventeen English L2 learners took…

This article reflects on the concept of meaningful literacy. It offers a classroom methodology, posting on a closed Facebook Group, that manifests this approach to English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom meaningful literacy instruction. This study aims to produce empirically informed teaching materials…

Over the past 45 years, the construct of syntactic sophistication has been assessed in L2 writing using what Bulté and Housen (2012) refer to as absolute complexity (Lu, 2011; Ortega, 2003; Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, & Kim, 1998). However, it has been argued that making inferences about learners based on absolute complexity indices (e.g., mean…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of incidental unfocused prompts and recasts on improving English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' grammatical accuracy as measured in students' oral interviews and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) grammar test. The design of the study was quasi-experimental with pre-tests,…

This study investigates the potential for linguistic microfeatures related to length, complexity, cohesion, relevance, topic, and rhetorical style to predict L2 writing proficiency. Computational indices were calculated by two automated text analysis tools (Coh- Metrix and the Writing Assessment Tool) and used to predict human essay ratings in a…

This study examined the influence of prompt characteristics on the averages of all scores given to test taker responses on the TOEFL iBT[TM] integrated Read-Listen-Write (RLW) writing tasks for multiple administrations from 2005 to 2009. In the context of TOEFL iBT RLW tasks, the prompt consists of a reading passage and a lecture. To understand…

This study investigated whether raters' second language (L2) background and the first language (L1) of test takers taking the TOEFL iBT® Speaking test were related through scoring. After an initial 4-hour training period, a group of 107 raters (mostly of learners of Chinese, Korean, and Spanish), listened to a selection of 432 speech samples that…

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the distinctness and reliability of analytic (or multitrait) rating dimensions and their relationships to holistic scores and "e-rater"® essay feature variables in the context of the TOEFL® computer-based test (CBT) writing assessment. Data analyzed in the study were analytic and holistic…

For many purposes, it is useful to collect a corpus of texts all produced to the same stimulus, whether to measure performance (as on a test) or to test hypotheses about population differences. This paper examines several methods for measuring similarities in phrasing and content and demonstrates that these methods can be used to identify…

This investigation of the comparability of writing assessment prompts was conducted in two phases. In an exploratory Phase I, 47 writing prompts administered in the computer-based Test of English as a Foreign Language[TM] (TOEFL[R] CBT) from July through December 1998 were examined. Logistic regression procedures were used to estimate prompt…

Eighty-three Test of English as a Foreign Language™ (TOEFL®) CBT writing prompts that were administered between July 1998 and August 2000 were examined in order to identify differences in scores that could be attributed to the response mode chosen by examinees (handwritten or word processed). Differences were examined statistically using…

The increasing availability and performance of computer-based testing has prompted more research on the automatic assessment of language and speaking proficiency. In this investigation, we evaluated the feasibility of using an off-the-shelf speech-recognition system for scoring speaking prompts from the LanguEdge field test of 2002. We first…