Research on English Medium Instruction (EMI) is rapidly increasing and well-documented worldwide; however, recent studies in EMI have given less emphasis on assessments in EMI classrooms. Indeed, assessment plays a significant role in informing teaching and learning competencies, but what to assess and how to assess are questions which have been…

One of the most challenging aspects of the teaching profession, at all levels, is to identify and illuminate assumptions--one's students' and one's own. This article describes how three members of the Hudson Valley Writing Project (HVWP) at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz worked closely with the National Writing Project's…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the efficiency, precision, and validity of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) could be improved by assessing confidence differences in knowledge that examinees possessed. We proposed a novel polytomous CAT model called the confidence-weighting computerized adaptive testing (CWCAT), which combined a…

This document describes the breadth of the research being conducted in 2008 by the Research and Development Division at Educational Testing Service (ETS). The research described falls into three large categories: (1) Research supported by the ETS research allocation; (2) Research funded by testing programs at ETS; and (3) Research funded by…

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,…

Discusses the applications of summative rating scales to assess frequency of language learning strategy use, describing the most widely employed strategy scale, the English-as-a-Second-Language/English-as-a-Foreign-Language version of the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). Studies of strategy use frequencies and factor analytic…

Until very recently, assessment in the Arabian Gulf focused primarily on high stakes testing. However, with the increased popularity of multiple-measure assessment, institutions in the region are adopting alternative forms of assessment. This paper provides a rationale for alternative assessment in the English-as-a-Foreign/Second-Language…

This book meets a critical assessment need which is the need to develop legally and educationally defensible assessment procedures for use with non-English language background students who are still in the process of learning English. The purpose of this text is to provide educators with both the information on which to make effective educational…