This article aims to give a comprehensive guide to planning and designing vocabulary tests which include Identifying the skills to be covered by the test; outlining the course content covered; preparing a table of specifications that shows the skill, content topics and number of questions allocated to each; and preparing the test instructions. The…

There now exists an established body of work outlining the challenges international students can face as part of the acculturation process, including a range of academic and non-academic pressures to overcome. For many students, writing essays in academic English for the first time is problematic. This article considers pedagogical approaches for…

Studies on Global Englishes (GE)-related pedagogical and curricular innovations emphasize the importance of exposing students to the diversity of English and its users. However, they do not provide direct evidence of changes in students' attitudes. The reliability and validity of existing quantitative instruments for measuring students' attitudes…

Research on Portuguese language exams in the language assessment field remains scarce. To bridge this gap, this study examined washback from the large-scale, high-stakes Portuguese proficiency tests created by the Center of Evaluation of Portuguese as a Foreign Language ("Centro de Avaliação de Português Língua Estrangeira," or CAPLE as…

Constraints-led approach (CLA) is widely used in physical education (PE). This four-phased study aimed to develop a self-report measurement of students' perceived constraints support in PE. The relationships among students' perceived constraints support, competence and novelty need satisfaction, motivation, effort, and engagement in PE were also…

The importance of understanding student attitudes has become paramount in the successful deployment of blended learning. This study aimed to examine the factorial structure of a scale designed to assess university students' attitudes towards blended learning. Using a descriptive quantitative research approach, the study included a sample of 889…

Literature has long been used as a tool for language teaching and learning. In the New Academic Structure in Hong Kong, it has become an important element in the senior secondary English language curriculum to promote communicative language teaching (CLT) with a process-oriented approach. However, as in many other English as a second or foreign…

This study investigates washback effects of IELTS test on university teachers' adoption of teaching materials in the classroom in China and see how a high-stake language exam affects their teaching practices and how they and their students perceive the effectiveness of the pedagogic adjustments. To this end, individual interview to five teacher…

This study explores the influence of external examination on teaching and learning Mathematics at the secondary schools affiliated with provincial and private examination boards in Pakistan. This study was conducted in two phases by employing the explanatory sequential mixed-method. First, the Mathematics examination papers of the last five years…

Background: The paper discusses how the design of summative assessments of practical science can be enhanced through the use of robust theoretical models that capture the diversity of scientific methods. The developments in assessment policy in England and the role of practical science in teaching and learning of science are reviewed. Purpose: The…

Background: Variations in the skill profiles of learners have become an important research area in recent years. However, there is a lack of empirical research on this topic in Japan. We conducted three studies to address this gap. Methods: Study 1 investigated the characteristics of the flat and uneven skill profiles of Japanese learners of…

This study investigated the effectiveness of using a social learning programme facilitated by Facebook to develop some creative writing skills and motivation to learn English among secondary-one school students. Seventy students in secondary-one grade in Al-Shahid Hussein A. Abdul-Raouf Mixed Secondary School in Al-Maabda in the second semester of…

A main goal of academic courses is to help students acquire knowledge and skills that they can transfer to multiple contexts. In this article, we (i) examine students' responses to test question templates (TQTs), a framework intended to facilitate transfer, and (ii) determine whether similar transfer-promoting strategies are commonly embedded in…

Children possess different beliefs regarding their ability to succeed in math and science, as well as different levels of enjoyment and interest in these topics. These motivational processes are important because they often shape learning-related behaviours which in turn predict academic outcomes, over and above previous performance. But, what are…

Peer-assisted learning and group facilitation have been proven to foster active participation in small-group learning, and these effective teaching modalities have been shown to enhance learning outcomes. This study introduced a student peer facilitator role in an anatomy small-group curriculum for pre-clerkship medical students and explored its…