We study the automatic identification of educational items worthy of content authors' attention. Based on the results of such analysis, content authors can revise and improve the content of learning environments. We provide an overview of item properties relevant to this task, including difficulty and complexity measures, item discrimination, and…

Second language (L2) writing has been determined to be influenced by what is read, with language learners tending to borrow words and short phrases from input texts while writing (e.g., Wang & Wang, 2015). This phenomenon is referred to as lexical alignment. Only one empirical study has investigated the influence that the linguistic complexity…

In this paper, the entries of Lang-8, which is a Social Networking Site (SNS) site for learning and practicing foreign languages, were analyzed and found to contain similar rates of errors for most error categories reported in previous research. These similarly rated errors were then processed using an algorithm to determine corrections suggested…

The problem. The purpose of this study is to investigate positive and negative cross-linguistic transfer on EFL learners' phraseological competence in collocations and its relationship to learners' linguistic proficiency. Method. A quantitative study was conducted. Two instruments, multiple choice test and grammaticality judgment test, were…

Discusses a test given to a group of elementary school students of English as a second language. The purpose of the test was to measure developmental errors, that is, errors which reflect a learner's competence at a given stage, and to illustrate some of the general characteristics of language acquisition. (SED)

A study investigated the variability of language performance on different types of testing task, global versus discrete-focus. Three tests (cloze, multiple-choice, and fill-in-the-blank) were developed to measure learners' knowledge of five verb forms. The tests, containing corresponding items designed to elicit equivalent structures, were…

Uses item analysis techniques to compare two multiple-choice test formats for assessing second language students' competence in English structure in terms of mean scores, item difficulty, and item discrimination. Findings reveal that difficulty and discrimination aspects are item-specific rather than format-dependent and items with moderate…

The role of language transfer in the acquisition of English as a second language as indicated in the production of relative clauses was examined. Analysis of adult Arab students' written responses to a variety of test types revealed that (1) language transfer is a significant factor in second language acquisition; (2) there is a distinction…