This article reports on an experimental study on the acquisition of prepositional relative clauses in second language European Portuguese by Chinese native speakers. It focuses on the role of resumption, mandatory in prepositional relative clauses in Chinese (the native language of the learners) and non-conventional in European Portuguese (the…

This study attempts to explain a systematic phenomenon that has been described in interlanguage grammars crosslinguistically: Null-Prep, which consists of omitting the obligatory preposition in certain movement constructions. We propose that Null-Prep is not related to lack of knowledge of "wh"-movement, as previously assumed, but to…

A challenge of large-scale oral communication assessments is to feasibly assess a broad construct that includes interactional competence. One possible approach in addressing this challenge is to use a spoken dialog system (SDS), with the computer acting as a peer to elicit a ratable speech sample. With this aim, an SDS was built and four trained…

The rating of proficiency tests that use the Inter-agency Roundtable (ILR) and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines claims that each major level is based on hierarchal linguistic functions that require mastery of multidimensional traits in such a way that each level subsumes the levels beneath it. These…

This study investigates whether re-thinking the separation of lexis and grammar in language testing could lead to more valid inferences about proficiency across modes. As argued by Römer, typical scoring rubrics ignore important information about proficiency encoded at the lexis-grammar interface, in particular how the co-selection of lexical and…

This study explored the role of written languaging (WL) in response to automated written corrective feedback (AWCF) in L2 accuracy improvement in English classrooms at a university in China. A total of 254 freshmen enrolled in intermediate composition classes participated, and they wrote 4 essays and received AWCF. A half of them engaged in WL…

The literature on task planning abounds with studies in laboratory or classroom contexts; however, the contribution of task planning to the testing context has remained a largely uncharted area of enquiry. The current study is primarily focused on exploring the impacts of pressured vs. unpressured on-line task planning conditions on EFL students'…

This research report provides an overview of the R&D efforts at Educational Testing Service related to its capability for automated scoring of nonnative spontaneous speech with the "SpeechRater"? automated scoring service since its initial version was deployed in 2006. While most aspects of this R&D work have been published in…

Adopting Linacre's guidelines for evaluating rating scale effectiveness, we examined whether and how a six-point rating scale functioned differently across raters, speech acts, and second language (L2) proficiency levels. We developed a 12-item Computerized Oral Discourse Completion Task (CODCT) for assessing the production of requests, refusals,…

Previous research has shown that children demonstrate similar sentence processing reflexes to those observed in adults, but they have difficulties revising an erroneous initial interpretation when they process garden-path sentences, passives, and "wh"-questions. We used the visual-world paradigm to examine children's use of syntactic and…

The present study examined the extent to which first language (L1) awareness can benefit second language (L2) grammatical learning of the French "Imparfait", a crosslinguistically complex target feature. Sixty-nine English-speaking learners of L2 French received different types of explicit information (EI) about L2 or L2 + L1…

In the present study, we take a longitudinal, corpus-based perspective to investigate short-term (over 9 months) linguistic change in the language produced for the spoken and written sections of the "TOEFL iBT"® test by a group of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners in China. The goal of the study is to identify patterns that…

Most of the laboratory studies on recasts have examined the role of intensive recasts provided repeatedly on the same target structure. This is different from the original definition of recasts as the reformulation of learner errors as they occur naturally and spontaneously in the course of communicative interaction. Using a within-group research…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which performance on the TOEFL iBT speaking section is associated with other indicators of Japanese university students' abilities to communicate orally in an academic English environment and to determine which components of oral ability for these tasks are best assessed by TOEFL iBT. To…

The need for foreign language education in the US has increased in recent years, and teaching methods based on traditional textbooks are unlikely to meet the real-world needs of current learners. As a response, interest in Language for Specific Purposes programs has grown and so has Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) methodology. This article…