Chulalongkorn University Language Institute (CULI) test was developed as a local standardised test of English for professional and international communication. To ensure that the CULI test fulfils its intended purposes, this study employed Kane's argument-based validation and Rasch measurement approaches to construct the validity argument for the…

Panahi and Mohebbi review James Dean Brown's 50-years of research in language testing, curriculum development and research statistics with reference to an impressionistic framework for analysis containing two components with their subcomponents: Annotations (i.e., briefing and implications) and main concepts and themes (i.e., testing and teaching…

Reverse engineering (RE) can play an important role in the re-designing tests in L2 English. It can also enrich the aim of teaching the same as raising children through academic achievement. In addition, it can play a key role in helping students understand how much their test is valid by using Standard reverse engineering (SRE). This paper is a…

As the most prestigious and popular standardized achievement test to certify examinees' proficiency of the English language at the national level, Foreign Language Examination (YDS) has been mostly taken by academic staff, undergraduate and graduate students, state employees, and military personnel for years in Turkey. The current study set out to…

This study is aimed at ensuring the validity of the Practical English Certification Test (PECT) of the Chung-nam Office of Education (COE) in Korea. Motivated by the demand for a developing localized English test to empower English learning in public education, the COE conducted the PECT for 38,544 students of elementary, middle and high schools…

This study inquires into whether prospective English language teachers consider the central exam, KPSS (The Selection Examination for Professional Posts in Public Organizations) valid to select and recruit English language teachers, and what suggestions they have concerning the improvement of the exam. The findings indicate that the majority of…

Student performance in basic math and reading skills in the United States trails behind other developed countries, providing the rationale for more research to determine how performance might be improved. Following evidence to conclude that multilingualism enhances cognitive, neuro-linguistic and meta-linguistic development, it is proposed that…

This dissertation reports development and validation studies of a Web-based standardized test of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL), designed to measure learners' off-line grammatical and pragmatic knowledge in multiple-choice format. Targeting Japanese majors in the U.S. universities and colleges, the test is designed to explore possible…

The development of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is described based on data from a case study of a reading test. The theory of genre proposed by Kress is also discussed, along with the need for the TOEFL-2000 test development team at the Educational Testing Service to address the washback effect of the test. (Author/LB)

Since the last "TESOL Quarterly" commemorative issue 15 years ago, there have been too many important developments in language testing and assessment for all of them to be discussed in a single article. Therefore, this article focuses on issues that we believe are integrally linked to pedagogic and curriculum concerns of English language teaching.…

Six basic questions that are important to consider in foreign language testing are often taken for granted: (1) What is it that a student "knows" when he or she has acquired a foreign language, and is it measured in qualitative or quantitative terms or both? (2) What are the roles of skills and attitudes in learning a foreign language?…

Language testing historians have tended to ignore a significant period in the evolution of language tests, the years 1883-1929. In the earliest years, testing focused on knowledge about, not of, the language and reflected the teaching of Latin and Greek more than that of living languages. Grammatical formalism and translation were emphasized, and…

On the premise that the value of a test relates to its uses, this article argues that tests should correspond to teachers' methods, objectives, and materials. A distinction is drawn between classroom and standardized testing, and three criteria for testing are offered. (LR)

The process of designing and validating a test of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) speaking skills is described. The study examined: (1) whether nine traits (pronunciation, grammar, discourse, fluency, content, vocabulary, comprehensibility, interactional competence, sociolinguistic competence) are relevant and separable parts of speaking…

This study attempted to determine the effectiveness of cloze procedures as norm-referenced instruments by comparing the differential responses of four groups of college students of English as a second language on two identical cloze passages. The responses were scored using both exact-answer and acceptable-word methods. The results indicate that…