The study investigated EFL students' ability to comprehend and analyze advertisements and identify their stylistic features. Results of a test with sixty six EFL college students showed lexical and structural features that are easy to identify and those that are difficult to identify. Responses also reflected the difficulty level of the lexical…

Although Keenan and Comrie's (1977) noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) has been shown to predict the difficulty order of relative clauses (RCs) in SLA, most studies of the NPAH have been on European languages. This paper tests the prediction for Japanese. Study 1 analyzes RCs in an oral interview corpus from 90 learners of Japanese at four…

In this study it was aimed to i) diagnose the topics that are perceived as difficult at the level of 6-8 science classes and ii) find out the reasons behind of these difficulties as well as propose suggestions to remedy these difficulties. Eighteen science teachers and three hundred students attending different types of secondary schools…

Can the salience of gender identity affect the math performance of 7-8 year old girls? Third-grade girls and boys were required to solve arithmetical problems of varied difficulty. Prior to the test, one half of the participants had their gender identity activated. Results showed that activation of gender identity affected girls' performance but…

This study examines the predictability of Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) reading item difficulty (equated delta) for the three major reading item types: main idea, inference, and explicit statement items. Each item type is analyzed separately, using 110 GRE reading passages and their associated 244 reading items; selective analyses of 285…

Prediction of the difficulty (equated delta) of a large sample (n=213) of reading comprehension items from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) was studied using main idea, inference, and supporting statement items. A related purpose was to examine whether text and text-related variables play a significant role in predicting item…

Whether or not subjects can simulate mental retardation, a consideration that has implications in criminal cases, was studied using 21 adult Caucasian males between 20 and 30 years of age, largely comprised of students and staff employees of the University of New Mexico. Subjects were asked to give genuine and simulated responses to two major test…

This digest provides basic information on phonological awareness in the process of learning to read for students with learning disabilities. It considers how phonological awareness fits into this process and the special problems experienced by children with learning disabilities or from culturally diverse backgrounds. Suggestions for teaching…

The French as a Second Language model tests for beginning levels 1, 2, and 3 were designed to evaluate students' language performance, as outlined in the program of studies for Alberta, Canada, in listening and reading comprehension and oral and written production, communication skills, culture, language and general language knowledge. The tests…

Traditionally, item difficulty has been defined in terms of the performance of examinees. For test development purposes, a more useful concept would be some kind of intrinsic item difficulty, defined in terms of the item's content, context, or characteristics and the task demands set by the item. In this investigation, the measurement literature…

Response accuracy and response speed provide separate measures of performance. Psychometricians have tended to focus on accuracy with the goal of characterizing examinees on the basis of their ability to respond correctly to items from a given content domain. With the advent of computerized testing, response times can now be recorded unobtrusively…

The degree to which item review on a computerized adaptive test (CAT) could be used by examinees to inflate their scores artificially was studied. G. G. Kingsbury (1996) described a strategy in which examinees could use the changes in item difficulty during a CAT to determine which items' answers are incorrect and should be changed during item…

When norm-referenced tests are developed for instructional purposes, to assess the effects of educational programs, or for educational research purposes, it can be very important to conduct item and test analyses. These analyses can evaluate the quality of items and of the test as a whole. Such analyses can also be employed to revise and improve…

The objective of this study was to determine the degree to which recommendations for passing scores, calculated on the basis of a traditional standard-setting methodology, might be affected by the mode (paper versus computer-screen prints) in which test items were presented to standard setting panelists. Results were based on the judgments of 31…

This volume contains a set of experimental English language vocabulary tests designed to be used with learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). The tests are graded into 6 levels of difficulty and there are 20 tests at each level. Teachers can use the tests to provide a rough lexical profile of individual students, or to monitor the progress…