According to the IELTS official website, IELTS candidates usually score lower in the IELTS Writing test than in the other language skills. This is disappointing for the many IELTS candidates who fail to get the overall band score they need. Surprisingly enough, few studies have addressed this issue. The present study, then, is aimed at shedding…

The increasing popularity of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) in non-native English-speaking countries has generated a demand for concrete examples in the creation of CEFR-based tests that assess the four main English skills. In response, this research endeavors to provide insight into the development and validation of a…

Despite being a popular topic in language testing, cognitive load has not received enough attention in vocabulary test items. The purpose of the current study was to scrutinize the cognitive load and vocabulary test items' differences, examinees' reaction times, and perceived difficulty. To this end, 150 students were selected using…

The substantive component of construct validity requires a confrontation between empirical test results and content relevance. The Vocabulary Size Test (VST) has been extensively validated in terms of empirical results. Less is known, however, about expert judgments of content relevance. The VST was constructed and validated according to the…

Research Findings: The aim of this study was to construct and validate "English Picture Vocabulary Test (EPVT)" that aimed to assess the very young learners' (VYLs) receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge for specific content areas in English as a foreign language (EFL). In this context, EPVT was created in several stages. One of…

The Multiple-choice (MC) item format is commonly used in educational assessments due to its economy and effectiveness across a variety of content domains. However, numerous studies have examined the quality of MC items in high-stakes and higher-education assessments and found many flawed items, especially in terms of distractors. These faulty…

The role of context in cloze tests has long been seen as both a benefit as well as a complication in their usefulness as a measure of second language comprehension (Brown, 2013). Passage cohesion, in particular, would seem to have a relevant and important effect on the degree to which cloze items function and the interpretability of performances…

This study examines the relationships among various major factors that may affect the difficulty level of language tests in an attempt to enhance the robustness of item difficulty estimation, which constitutes a crucial factor ensuring the equivalency of high-stakes tests. The observed difficulties of the reading and listening sections of two EFL…

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have the potential to reduce the workload for the second language (L2) teachers and test developers. We propose two AI distractor-generating methods for creating Chinese vocabulary items: semantic similarity and visual similarity. Semantic similarity refers to antonyms and synonyms, while visual similarity…

Technology-enhanced items (TEIs) are innovative, computer-delivered test items that allow test takers to better interact with the test environment compared to traditional multiple-choice items (MCIs). The interactive nature of TEIs offer improved construct coverage compared with MCIs but little research exists regarding students' performance on…

This article aims at proposing a new measurement to assess the effects of language learners' goal-setting behavior, as an alternative to the traditional open-ended questionnaire. This goal-setting instrument was carefully developed through three phases. In the first phase, an item pool was generated. In the second phase, a pilot study was carried…

This study examines the response patterns of 288 Spanish-English dual language learners on a standardized test of receptive Spanish vocabulary. Investigators analyzed responses to 54 items on the "Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes" (TVIP) [Dunn, L. M., D. E. Lugo, E. R. Padilla, and L. M. Dunn. 1986. "Test de Vocabulario en Imganes…

As a high-stakes standardized test, IELTS is expected to have comparable forms of test papers so that test takers from different test administration on different dates receive comparable test scores. Therefore, this study examined the text difficulty and task characteristics of four parallel academic IELTS reading tests to reveal to what extent…

The present study investigated the applicability of word reading, word segmentation, and text reading as diagnostic tools to assess comprehension, detect struggling readers, and inform instruction for low-level Chinese as second language (L2) learners (n = 70). The results showed that the three instruments measured different dimensions of word…

We present a tool for the creation and curation of C-tests. C-tests are an established tool in language proficiency testing and language learning. They require examinees to complete a text in which the second half of every second word is replaced by a gap. We support teachers and test designers in creating such tests through a web-based system…