The rise in the affordability of quality video production equipment has resulted in increased interest in video-mediated tests of foreign language listening comprehension. Although research on such tests has continued fairly steadily since the early 1980s, studies have relied on analyses of raw scores, despite the growing prevalence of item…

The visual complexity of orthographies varies across writing systems. Prior research has shown that complexity strongly influences the initial stage of reading development: the perceptual learning of grapheme forms. This study presents a computational simulation that examines the degree to which visual complexity leads to grapheme learning…

Assessing use of language learning strategies has become commonplace around the world. One strategy assessment tool is the questionnaire, which usually asks students to report on their typical, general use of language learning strategies. Because of this general focus, most questionnaires do not require respondents to complete an actual language…

The Netherlands' secondary education system is highly differentiated, with four different school types for four scholastic ability levels. Final examinations must accommodate these four levels, and require a test-independent definition of the intended final ability levels as well as a sample-free evaluation of the range of ability levels at which…

This paper describes a framework for researching the Cognition Hypothesis which claims that pedagogic tasks be sequenced for learners on the basis of increases in their cognitive complexity. It distinguishes dimensions of complexity which increase the conceptual and linguistic demands tasks make on communication, so creating the conditions for L2…

Any systematic approach to the assessment of students' ability implies the use of a model. The more explicit the model is, the more its users know about what they are doing and what the consequences are. The Rasch model is a strong model where measurement is a bonus of the model itself. It is based on four ideas: (1) separation of observable…