"The English Speaking Achievement Test for Japanese Junior High School Students" (ESAT-J) was introduced to contribute to levelling up public English education in Tokyo in 2022. Critics, however, have made claims in the mass media against the use of the test and stakeholder groups have called for its cancellation. This paper presents an…

It has been argued in the literature on (language) testing that any act of testing/assessment can impact: (1) educators' curriculum design; (2) teachers' teaching practices; and (3) students' learning behaviors. This quality of any given testing situation or act of assessment has been called washback, or backwash if you will. Washback falls into…

This study aims to disclose the Iranian university teachers' perceptions of the fundamentals of language assessment literacy (LAL). To this aim, using purposive sampling, eighteen university teachers from two Iranian universities were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. Their viewpoints were audio-recorded, transcribed, and…

The present study aimed to cover a holistic viewpoint toward assessment and its features. It discussed the problems in this area during the dominance of COVID-19. This study sought to present some notes on the current online assessment strategies used by the institutions. It measured the effects of the implemented techniques on the nature and…

Studies on washback of not only international standardized proficiency tests, but also localized high-stakes tests have been increasingly attracting considerable interest. The current study explores the washback effects of a Vietnam-made localized English proficiency test named "Vietnamese Standardized Test of English Proficiency, level…

One of the main challenges higher educational institutions encounter amid the recent COVID-19 crisis is transferring assessment approaches from the traditional face-to-face form to the online Emergency Remote Teaching approach. A set of language assessment principles, practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity, and washback, which can be…

Celpe-Bras, is the exam for the certification of proficiency in Portuguese as a foreign language. It, is the only Portuguese proficiency test recognized by the Brazilian government (Ministério da Educação, 2013). Given the recent growth of interest and also its unique design as a large-scale proficiency test, this article provides a general…

The Chinese National Matriculation English Test (NMET) has a test purpose of producing beneficial washback to promote senior high school English teaching and learning. This article presents a large-scale nationwide survey research on student perceptions of the NMET's before-test washback on their English learning outcomes in senior high school and…

Assessment and technology are two components that are very important in education. Assessment is the core of education, which provides teachers much information from their students and technology helps to achieve the learning goal more easily. Teachers are able to take the advantages of the integration of technology and assessment to get really…

According to the IELTS official website, IELTS candidates usually score lower in the IELTS Writing test than in the other language skills. This is disappointing for the many IELTS candidates who fail to get the overall band score they need. Surprisingly enough, few studies have addressed this issue. The present study, then, is aimed at shedding…

Admission in English-medium universities or institutions of higher education depends on the results obtained by candidates in large-scale proficiency tests including Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) internet-based test (iBT). The structure and administration procedure of the TOEFL iBT speaking test leaves no room for carrying out…

This study offers a bibliometric overview of the English language assessment research from 1992 to 2024. It aims to uncover the current state, research trends, and future directions of the field. A total of 927 articles published in Web of Science (WoS) were analyzed using the VOSviewer bibliometric software tool. Based on the sample of 927…

This study employed a multi-methods design to investigate the impact of preparation on Chinese test-takers' perceptions of the integrated TOEFL iBT speaking and writing design. Combining results from over 1700 surveys and 10 interviews, it was found that these Chinese test-takers, who are the most vulnerable group in the multimillion testing…

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) oral proficiency interview -- computer (OPIc) testing system represents an ambitious effort in language assessment: Assessing oral proficiency in over a dozen languages, on the same scale, from virtually anywhere at any time. Especially for users in contexts where multiple foreign…

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…