Because few studies of disciplinary business writing have examined whether language features play a role in instructor assessment of student writing, this study explored the relationship between student language use and instructor essay scores. Undergraduate business students wrote a case study critique as part of their final exam, and their…

This research aimed to design e-activities based on cognitive scaffolding and measure their impact on underachieving learners' grammar competencies in middle schools. The focus was to utilise technology tools in providing underachieving learners with the support necessary to help them improve their usage of English grammar. A set of electronic…

Rasch testlet and bifactor models are two measurement models that could deal with local item dependency (LID) in assessing the dimensionality of reading comprehension testlets. This study aimed to apply the measurement models to real item response data of the Iranian EFL reading comprehension tests and compare the validity of the bifactor models…

English spelling has always been described by many language researchers and teachers as a daunting task especially for learners whose first language is not English. This monograph presents the report of an investigation on the use of spelling, which includes the determining factor of grammar in the teaching of English, in it we will develop a…

The present study aimed to describe and evaluate the current assessment practices prevalent in the different translation courses offered at the College of Languages and Translation (COLT). A sample of specialized translation final exams in 18 translation subject areas was collected. Each final exam was analyzed in terms of the following: (1) # of…

This dissertation investigates how English-speaking second language (L2) learners of Mandarin perceive, process and learn Mandarin lexical tones. While most languages use modulations in pitch (intonation) to convey meanings at the phrasal and sentential levels, a number of languages, including Mandarin, also use suprasegmental features such as…

Standardized assessments are widely used to determine access to educational resources with important consequences for later economic outcomes in life. However, many design features of the tests themselves may lead to psychological reactions influencing performance. In particular, the level of difficulty of the earlier questions in a test may…

In confirmatory factor analysis quite similar models of measurement serve the detection of the difficulty factor and the factor due to the item-position effect. The item-position effect refers to the increasing dependency among the responses to successively presented items of a test whereas the difficulty factor is ascribed to the wide range of…

Drawing on recent interdisciplinary, multidimensional research on civic and religious education in northern Europe, this article explores disciplinary epistemological economies in an era of mounting discontent with the narrowness of mono-disciplinary analyses of complex social and educational issues. It is argued in the article that under…

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are the primary providers of dysphagia management; however, this role has been criticized with assertions that SLPs are inadequately trained in swallowing physiology (Campbell-Taylor, 2008). To date, diagnostic acuity and treatment planning for swallowing impairments by practicing SLPs have not been…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of neighborhood density and syntactic class on word recognition in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typical development (TD). Method: Fifteen children with SLI ("M" age = 6;5 [years;months]) and 15 with TD ("M" age = 6;4) completed a…

The relationship of expected and actual difficulty of items on six mathematics question papers designed for 16-year olds in England was investigated through paired comparison using experts and testing with students. A variant of the Rasch model was applied to the comparison data to establish a scale of expected difficulty. In testing, the papers…

Using the case study of an unstaffed, interactive making space at the Portland Museum of Art, this article explores the potential for museums to facilitate visitor to visitor learning without the in-person assistance of a gallery educator. It offers concrete steps to design activities, environments, and supporting resources which prompt close…

This article provides an illustrative description of the pre-post difference index (PPDI), a simple, nontechnical yet robust tool for examining the instructional sensitivity of assessment items. Extension educators often design pretest-posttest instruments to assess the impact of their curricula on participants' knowledge and understanding of the…

Over the last three decades, emotional intelligence (EI) has received considerable empirical attention especially in academic context. Following this line of research, the study reported in this paper investigated the relationship between trait EI and EFL learners' second language (L2) oral performance. A sample of 102 Iranian EFL students, all…