Vocabulary's relationship to reading proficiency is frequently cited as a justification for the assessment of L2 written receptive vocabulary knowledge. However, to date, there has been relatively little research regarding which modalities of vocabulary knowledge have the strongest correlations to reading proficiency, and observed differences have…

This study explores the differential effects of captions and subtitles on extensive TV viewing comprehension by adolescent beginner foreign language learners, and how their comprehension is affected by factors related to the learner, preteaching of target vocabulary, the lexical coverage of the episodes, and the testing instruments. Four classes…

Turkish and Foreign Languages Research and Application Center (TÖMER) is one of the important institutions for learning Turkish as a foreign language. In these institutions, proficiency tests are applied at the end of each level. However, test applications in TÖMERs vary between each center as there is no shared program in teaching Turkish as a…

On the grounds that assessment stands for a mirror of teaching and learning practices, its value cannot be ignored in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) programmes as all those involved in foreign language teaching in non-native settings need constant feedback about the effectiveness of their ventures. Assessment of young learners of…

Three mode comparability studies were conducted on the following Saturday national ACT test dates: October 26, 2019, December 14, 2019, and February 8, 2020. The primary goal of these studies was to evaluate whether ACT scores exhibited mode effects between paper and online testing that would necessitate statistical adjustments to the online…

My favorite exam question comes from the final exam in an introductory mechanics course: "A rolling 31 ton railroad boxcar collides with a stationary flatcar. The coupling mechanism activates so the cars latch together and roll down the track attached. Of the initial kinetic energy, 38% dissipates as heat, sound, vibrations, mechanical…

Goldhammer (this issue) proposes an interesting approach to dealing with the speededness of item responses. Rather than modeling speed as a latent variable that varies from person to person, he proposes to use experimental conditions that are expected to fix the speed, thereby eliminating individual differences on this dimension in order to make…

A teacher learning how to write test questions (test items) will almost certainly encounter item-writing guidelines--lists of item-writing do's and don'ts. Item-writing guidelines usually are presented as applicable across all assessment settings. Table I shows some guidelines that I believe to be generally applicable and two will be briefly…

An important assumption of item response theory is item parameter invariance. Sometimes, however, item parameters are not invariant across different test administrations due to factors other than sampling error; this phenomenon is termed item parameter drift. Several methods have been developed to detect drifted items. However, most of the…

Building on previous works by Lord and Ogasawara for dichotomous items, this article proposes an approach to derive the asymptotic standard errors of item response theory true score equating involving polytomous items, for equivalent and nonequivalent groups of examinees. This analytical approach could be used in place of empirical methods like…

In this paper an attempt was made to analyze the effect of items direction (positive or negative) on the Alpha Cronbach reliability coefficient and the Split Half reliability coefficient in Likert scale. The descriptive survey research method was used for the study and sample of 510 undergraduate students were selected by used random sampling…

Improving the proficiency in mathematical literacy is one of the efforts to improve the human resources quality. Its development describes the students' strengths and weaknesses to support the improvement. The research tried to describe the development of students' proficiency in mathematical literacy, based on the school level and the students'…

This study addresses the development and evaluation of the Physics Problem-Solving Taxonomy (PPST), comprising five levels: retrieval, diagnosis, strategy, conceptual, and creative thinking. The taxonomy draws on Bloom's revised taxonomy in the cognitive domain, the Types of Knowledge Taxonomy, and the Problem-Solving Taxonomy in engineering. The…

Reasoning about mechanism is central to disciplined inquiry in science and engineering and should thus be one of the foundations of a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. In addition, mechanistic reasoning is one of the core competencies listed in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Engineering Concepts and…

The purpose of this article of reflection is to raise awareness of how poor design of language assessments may have detrimental effects, if crucial qualities and technicalities of test design are not met. The article first discusses these central qualities for useful language assessments. Then, guidelines for creating listening assessments, as an…