This editorial explores the intersection of equity and validity in language assessment, focusing on language-minoritized test-takers. Recognizing that tests often perpetuate inequitable power dynamics, our special issue, 'Equity Orientations for Validity Frameworks: Exploring the Intersections of Language and Assessment for Language-Minoritized…

Knowledge about the smallest meaningful units of language, morphemes, is crucial for vocabulary and reading comprehension. This meta-analysis of 43 studies examined differences in morphological knowledge in the societal language between language-minority and language-majority children. There was a moderate to large mean group difference in…

The Zhuang language test ("Vahcuengh Sawcuengh Suijbingz Gaujsi", VSSG) is the first minority language test in the People's Republic of China. It was designed with multiple goals including improving Zhuang language teaching, recruiting students for relevant majors of tertiary study, identifying proficiency for work-related applications,…

Research has shown that learning more than one language may have beneficial effects on executive functions, such as focused attention, inhibitory control, and switching between tasks. Evidence demonstrating these effects comes from studies with infants, children and adults from a range of language combinations. Much less direct evidence of such…

This study aimed to examine incidental learning of multiword expressions (MWEs) from bilingual captioned videos among language minority students. The participants consisted of 403 language minority university students enrolled in the Preparatory Year Programme (PYP) in the Southern part of China. The study evaluated participants' vocabulary…

Numerous studies suggest that bilinguals demonstrate smaller vocabularies than monolinguals, and that bilinguals' breadth of vocabulary knowledge - both expressive and receptive - is linked to input frequencies in each language [e.g. Hoff, E., S. Welsh, S. Place, and K. Ribot. 2014. "Properties of Dual Language Input That Shape Bilingual…

Minority languages in diglossic situations with a majority language face the danger of eventual loss of vitality. The first sign of this is when child language acquisition begins to erode. This dissertation investigates the intergenerational transmission of the Isan language, spoken in the Northeastern region of Thailand. While the Isan community…

Purpose: This study aimed to assess a protocol for the evaluation of developmental language disorder (DLD) in language minority bilingual children (LMBC). The specific aims were (a) to test group differences, (b) to evaluate the discriminant validity of single measures included in the protocol, and (c) to define which model of combined variables…

This commentary highlights major validation challenges raised, explicitly or implicitly, from the four articles in the special issue on "Validity Considerations for Assessing Language Proficiency in Young Language Minority Students." They are concerned with: (1) the construct definition in consideration of young language-minority (LM)…

Drawing from humanizing pedagogies (Bartolome, 1994; del Carmen Salazar; Freire & Ramos, 1993) and humanizing research (Paris & Winn, 2013), in this article I propose an approach to "humanizing assessment" that begins with the position that inclusive and equitable educational opportunities and assessment practices that meet the…

Self-efficacy, the system of beliefs that individuals possess which enables them to exercise control and actions when faced with a specific task, is an essential component to language learning, as it has the potential to promote the self-regulatory capacity required for successful language acquisition and performance. One way in which…

The dual-language bilingual program in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) is intended to facilitate emergent bilinguals (EBs) integration into the regular school curriculum and ensure access to equal educational opportunities, while promoting biliteracy and bilingualism for both EBs and native English speakers. The dual-language (DL)…

Teachers' language attitudes play a key role in their decision-making, evaluation, and behaviour in the classroom. This is as true in a monolingual environment as it is in a bilingual or multilingual linguistic situation, but it is fair to assume that the two different linguistic environments are associated with the dominance of different…

Young Indigenous students with a language background of emergent, unrecognised, and/or non-prestigious contact languages are commonly by-passed as English language learners (ELLs). Consequently, they are taught and assessed via undifferentiated mainstream pedagogy and testing, generally characterised by reported underachievement. Long-term social…

The language assessment issues discussed in this paper are set against the backdrop of the English as an additional language (EAL) provision for students from ethnic and linguistic minority communities in the publicly funded school education system in England. We will first provide a background description of the educational response to linguistic…