The accuracy of placement results undoubtedly affects students' subsequent learning achievements in language programs. Although there has been a growing body of studies in the field of heritage language (HL) education, research on HL placement remains scarce, and little is known about the most appropriate and effective ways to place heritage…

Placement tests are used to support a particular need in a local context--to determine the best starting place for a student entering a specific programme of language study. This brief report will focus on the development of an innovative placement test with self-directed elements for our local needs at a university in Canada for students studying…

This study details the development of a local test designed to place university Spanish students (n = 719) into one of the four different course levels and to distinguish between traditional L2 learners and early bilinguals on the basis of their linguistic knowledge, regardless of the variety of Spanish they were exposed to. Early bilinguals…

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the Iowa State University administration to impose face coverings and other safety regulations across the university campus. To comply with these safety measures, several changes to the English Placement Test of Oral Communication (EPT OC) had to be made. This paper discusses how the EPT OC was adapted to comply with…

Foreign language placement testing, an important component in university foreign language programs, has received considerable, but not copious, attention over the years in second language (L2) testing research (Norris, 2004), and it has been mostly concentrated on L2 English. In contrast to validation research on L2 English placement testing, the…

This study is an investigation of the effects of linguistic features on quality of second language (L2) writers' essays for writing course placement at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB), and by implication at other universities and colleges. This study addresses the following research questions: (1) To what extent do selected linguistic…

Over the years, we have been witnessing the burgeoning of interdisciplinary interest in the use of ideological discourses and enactment of representations through linguistic and semiotic choices in positioning, (re)constructing and expressing identities. In this picture, there is an evident paucity of research investigating the kinds of…

Title III is a federal entitlement through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that provides supplemental resources for English Language Learners (ELL) and immigrants students who have recently arrived to the U.S. More specifically, Title III funding supports student language acquisition and academic achievement. Depending on the English…