This paper analyzes writing tasks in academic writing textbooks for Japanese university students, focusing on the organization and difficulty of these tasks based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). A total of 411 writing tasks from 30 textbooks were coded by two experienced Japanese English teachers. The author…

Computer-based test (CBT) and paper-based test (PBT) are two test modes to the test takers that have been widely adopted in the field of language testing or assessment over the last few decades. Due to the rapid development of science and technology, it is a trend for universities and educational institutions striving rather hard to deliver the…

Background: The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) (Council of Europe 2001) has, over the past decade, come to be widely used as a reference tool for teaching, learning and assessment (Alderson 2002; North 2014). The focus of the current study is on scaling the China Standards of English (CSE) vocabulary descriptors for College English…