One of the central considerations in the validity argument for the TOEFL iBT is the relationship between the language on the exam and the language required for university courses. Corpus linguistics has recently been shown to be an effective way to explore this relationship, which can also be considered as an aspect of authenticity. Applying…

Data from 787 international undergraduate students at an urban university in the United States were used to demonstrate the importance of separating a sample into meaningful subgroups in order to demonstrate the ability of an English language assessment to predict the first-year grade point average (GPA). For example, when all students were pooled…

Interest in Web-based and computer-assisted language testing is growing in the field of English for academic purposes (EAP). In this study, four groups of undergraduate EAP students (n = 120), each group consisted of 30 students, were randomly selected from four different disciplines, i.e. biology, political sciences, psychology, and law. The four…

With the goal of improving the reliability and validity of tests of English as a foreign language, in particular with respect to the question of whether to allow notetaking on EFL/ESL computer-based listening comprehension tests, the present study examined the effects on ESL listening comprehension of notetaking (allowed or disallowed) in relation…