Establishing a cut score is a crucial aspect of the test development process since the selected cut score has the potential to impact students' performance outcomes and shape instructional strategies within the classroom. Therefore, it is vital for those involved in test development to set a cut score that is both fair and justifiable. This cut…

The purpose of this study is to analyze newspaper articles from three publications ("Chosun Ilbo," "Donga Ilbo," and "JoongAng Ilbo") regarding a newly developed high-stakes English test in South Korea, the National English Ability Test (NEAT), from the viewpoint of critical discourse analysis. All of the articles…

English language testing has been developing with great momentum in China in the past two decades. However, little research is existent as to how these English tests are developed, administered, and used. This study reported a survey of English language testing practice in the Chinese context through empirically examining the testing practice of…

Across the globe, educational tests are being used at a rapidly increasing rate. More recently, educational tests are being used to inform educational policy and for holding educators accountable for student learning. One reason educational assessments are used for these important purposes is that they are considered to provide reliable and…

Testing is an issue of increasing importance. While for many teachers language learning should be communicative; in fact, they expect their students to provide evidence of their knowledge. Thus, there is a clear mismatch on the approach to language teaching and language testing. As a consequence, there is an evident need change the testing…

The purpose of this research study was to conduct exploratory research to examine federally-mandated annual English language proficiency (ELP) assessment of English language learners (ELLs) and their use of accommodations on the assessment. First the researcher provides a review of the literature regarding accommodations provided for ELLs,…

One of the fundamental problems in language testing is the lack of adequate generalizability between what a test is measuring and what fulfills the learners' real world language use needs. It is important to recognize that no matter how precise a test measures a construct, if the way that a construct is defined and the way that test tasks are…

Although much has been said about ergonomics in interface and in computer tools and interface design, very few articles in major journals have addressed this topic in relation to language testing. This article describes an experiment carried out at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, in which 27 Media and Communication students provided…

This study provides specific evidence regarding the extent to which quantitative measures, common sense notional measures, and comprehensive measures adequately characterize spontaneous, although engaged, speech. As such, the study contributes to the growing body of literature describing the current limits of automatic systems for evaluating…

This article is an imaginary Socratic dialogue between J. S. Mill and Michel Foucault, principally concerning educational assessment.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how and why Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) has developed a system aiming to effectively place students in freshman and developmental English programs. The placement system includes: triangulating data from external test scores, with scores from a panel-marked hand-written essay (HWE),…

The way in which examinations influence teaching and learning is called washback. This study examined the attitudes of 100 teachers towards the computerization of the English section of the Spanish University Entrance Examination paying special attention to the nature and scope of these changes, and the constraints and benefits. A 10 item…

Mixed-format tests containing both multiple-choice and constructed-response items are widely used on educational tests. Such tests combine the broad content coverage and efficient scoring of multiple-choice items with the assessment of higher-order thinking skills thought to be provided by constructed-response items. However, the combination of…

The University entrance examination (PAU) is the most important high-stakes exam in the General educational system in Spain. It has 6 sections of which the Foreign Language one is very relevant to the final score. The English section has had almost not significant changes in the last 20 years despite all the research in language learning and…

This paper synthesizes ideas from the fields of graphical modeling and education testing, particularly item response theory (IRT) applied to computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Graphical modeling can offer IRT a language for describing multifaceted skills and knowledge, and disentangling evidence from complex performances. IRT-CAT can offer…