This article reviews a selected sample of 70 empirical studies in journal articles and doctoral dissertations on language assessment in China between 2011 and 2018. Following a brief introduction to the history and current state of language assessment in China, the article presents a critical review of language assessment research on six themes…

The Guidelines for Good Practice of the European Association for Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA) stress the importance of collaboration between all parties involved in the process of developing instruments, activities and programmes for testing and assessment. Collaboration is considered to be as important as validity and reliability,…

This study examined the second language (L2) development of adult learners of Spanish at three levels of proficiency during and after a semester of instruction. A fundamental goal was to identify cognitive and psychosocial individual differences (IDs) that can explain between-learner variation over time in order to expand our understanding of the…

A study of learner modality in second language learning conducted at a small, private liberal arts university had as subjects 20 freshmen in a second-semester Spanish course. The students' modality strength (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or mixed) was correlated with Scholastic Aptitude Test measures, grades, and gender. The findings support…

Discusses a study designed to verify the validity and effectiveness of the summary as a teaching and testing tool. The subjects were Italian students enrolled in second year French at the university level. (CFM)

While language testing specialists agree on the importance of their field and that the intelligent application of language testing approaches, techniques, and methods to the classroom can improve the overall quality of language learning and teaching, that opinion may not be shared by teachers. Few teachers have training in language testing, and…