The present study examined the performance of the bi-factor multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) model and higher-order (HO) cognitive diagnostic models (CDM) in providing diagnostic information and general ability estimation simultaneously in a listening test. The data used were 1,611 examinees' item-level responses to an in-house EFL…

Children with Developmental language disorder (DLD) have particular difficulty learning language despite otherwise general normal development. When school age bilingual children struggle with language, a common question is if the difficulties they present reflect lack of ability or lack of language experience. To address the question of…

This study investigated how peer-mediated Dynamic Assessment (DA) unfolded in translation revision competence (TRC) of students of Master's degree of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) in China. Thirty subjects first completed three revision tasks and were then rated as high- or low-level performers according to their average scores across the…

The current study examined the effects of text-based relational (i.e., cohesion), propositional-specific (i.e., lexical), and syntactic features in a source text on subsequent integration of the source text in spoken responses. It further investigated the effects of word integration on human ratings of speaking performance while taking into…

This study is an attempt to classify raters according to their weighting patterns and explore systematic differences between rater types in the rating process. In the context of an EFL speaking test, 126 raters were classified into three types--form-oriented, balanced, and content-oriented--through cluster analyses of their weighting patterns…

This study used think-aloud protocols to compare essay-rating processes across holistic and analytic rating scales in the context of China's College English Test Band 6 (CET-6). A group of 9 experienced CET-6 raters scored the same batch of 10 CET-6 essays produced in an operational CET-6 administration twice, using both the CET-6 holistic…

This article investigates assessor decision making when using and applying a marking guide for a note-taking task in a specific purpose English language listening test. In contexts where note-taking items are used, a marking guide is intended to stipulate what kind of response should be accepted as evidence of the ability under test. However,…

The present study investigated the functioning of three psychometric models for cognitive diagnosis--the general diagnostic model, the fusion model, and latent class analysis--when applied to large-scale English as a second language listening and reading comprehension assessments. Data used in this study were scored item responses and incidence…

This article reports on two related studies carried out to link the State examination of Dutch as a second language to the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR). In the first study, key persons from institutions for higher education were asked to determine the minimally required language level of beginning students. In the…

Although the primary use of the speaking section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-based test (TOEFL[R] iBT Speaking) is to inform admissions decisions at English medium universities, it may also be useful as an initial screening measure for international teaching assistants (ITAs). This study provides criterion-related…

In this selective look at research on test-taking strategies over the last 25 years, brief mention is made of the beginnings of test-taker strategy research, and then important developments in its evolution to the present are discussed, focusing on conceptual frameworks for classifying strategies, first and second language-related strategies,…