There has been much debate in assessment research about the inclusion of Global English accents in high-stakes listening tests. This study explored test-takers' attitudes toward the inclusion of different English accents in the Duolingo English Test (DET) 2021 test version and their associations with listening test scores. One hundred sixty…

Given the increasing emphasis of communicative competence in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts and the lack of validation research on speaking assessments for adolescent EFL learners, in the current study we examined the validity of the TOEFL Junior® speaking test, a relatively new speaking assessment developed by Educational Testing…

Stakeholders of language tests are often interested in subscores. However, reporting a subscore is not always justified; a subscore should provide reliable and distinct information to be worth reporting. When a subscore is used for decisions across multiple levels (e.g., individual test takers and schools), it needs to be justified for its…

In this study, we assessed the invariance in the factor structure underlying English-language proficiency for two groups of adolescent learners in Japan: students in middle school (ages 13-15 years) and students in high school (ages 16-18 years). Language proficiency was measured using the "TOEFL Junior"® Comprehensive test, an…

The present study examined the reliability of the reading, listening, speaking, and writing section scores for the TOEFL iBT® test and their interrelationship in order to collect empirical evidence to support, respectively, the "generalization" inference and the "explanation" inference in the TOEFL iBT validity argument…

The National Center Test is a test that high school graduates take in order to be matriculated into the majority of universities in Japan. Its English section (NCT), though, is scheduled to be replaced by commercially available private English tests of four skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) due to the fact that NCT currently measures…

Interpreting, especially simultaneous interpreting, is a complex cognitive processing task that has special requirements for the interpreter's memory resources. To date, interpreting scholars have not yet reached a consensus about the interrelationship between memory and interpreting quality, but it is generally acknowledged that memory is one of…

The present study aims at finding the differences between bilingual and monolingual learners across gender in the use of cognitive, metacognitive, and total reading strategies, as well as reading comprehension ability. To this end, 50 Persian-Turkish bilinguals and 36 Persian monolinguals participated in the study. A standard test of reading…

The study investigated how group-dynamics instruction techniques of adaptable nature can be to the benefit of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners so as to develop and improve their willingness-to-communicate and speaking-ability in the long run. After analyzing the data via ANCOVA and EFA, the researcher selected 108 young Iranian male…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of portfolio assessment as a process-oriented mechanism on the autonomy of Iranian advanced EFL learners. A particular concern was to examine the potential effect of gender on portfolio assessment by taking the learners' writing ability into account. The participants were 80 male and female…

The "e-rater"® automated essay scoring system is used operationally in the scoring of "TOEFL iBT"® independent and integrated tasks. In this study we explored the psychometric added value of reporting four trait scores for each of these two tasks, beyond the total e-rater score.The four trait scores are word choice, grammatical…

This study examined the heterogeneity in the English-as-a-second-language (ESL) test population by modeling the relationship between test-taker background characteristics and test performance as measured by the "TOEFL iBT"® using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with covariate approach. The background characteristics studied…

The purpose of this study was to examine adult international students' English learning beliefs and their use of different learning strategies at a four-year institution. This study was conducted to analyze English learning strategy use and beliefs about English language learning, and the relationship between beliefs and use reported by 84…

Using an ex-post facto, non-experimental approach, this research examined the impact of English language proficiency and multilingualism on the academic performance of international students enrolled in a four-year university located in north central Louisiana in the United States. Data were collected through a self-reported questionnaire from 59…

The present study examined the factor structures across features of 446 examinees' responses to a writing task that integrates reading and listening modalities as well as reading and listening comprehension items of the TOEFL iBT[R] (Internet-based test). Both human and automated scores obtained for the integrated essays were utilized. Based on a…