During oral exams at the German distance learning university, we noticed that students fear that they will be faced with questions that they have not anticipated. In our opinion, this is mainly because students have no chance to train and thereby gather positive experiences with exam situations as they are distributed all over Germany and thus it…

What are some remediation programs for students who do not pass high stakes exit exams? Regardless of one's personal beliefs about high stakes exit exams, 52% of all high school students in the United States who are in public schools will be required to take and pass an exit exam. Nationally, these tests are gaining momentum. In most cases,…

The Document-Based Question (DBQ) is an integral part of the United States History Advanced Placement Exam, and is required as part of an exam that also includes answering two general "free response" essays and a multiple choice question section. For the DBQ, students are given a question about a specific time period in American history,…

In recent years academics have commonly bemoaned the lack of essay-writing ability exhibited by their students. Whether or not the halcyon era in which undergraduates routinely knew how to construct a persuasive essay ever truly existed, it is certainly the case that contemporary students can benefit from advice on preparation of a long-format…

The aim of this report is to present the findings of the second phase in a longitudinal study of the impact of changes in the TOEFL® test on teaching and learning in test preparation classrooms. The focus of this phase was to monitor six teachers from five countries in Central and Eastern Europe as they received news about changes in the TOEFL and…

In France, secondary teachers are public sector employees. Becoming a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) teacher in secondary education is subject to passing public competitive entry examinations. Preparation for these examinations is provided in College Departments, which are essentially assessed on the basis of their success…

The increasing availability and performance of computer-based testing has prompted more research on the automatic assessment of language and speaking proficiency. In this investigation, we evaluated the feasibility of using an off-the-shelf speech-recognition system for scoring speaking prompts from the LanguEdge field test of 2002. We first…

A College Board-sponsored survey of a nationally representative sample of takers of the 1995-96 SAT I: Reasoning Test yielded a database for more than 4,000 examinees, about 500 of whom had attended formal coaching programs outside their schools. Several alternative analytical methods were used to estimate the effects of coaching on SAT scores.…

The five-paragraph theme, while widely used by writing instructors, has often been criticized for its tendency to focus on a rigid formula rather than a writer's ideas. This study investigates the decision of an early-career teacher, Leigh, to teach her eighth-grade students the five-paragraph model in the context of a state-mandated writing…

This applied dissertation was designed to provide better access to current preparation strategies for passing the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test. The test preparation strategies did not meet the needs of the students. The students did not know how to use the computer to study for the test and did not know how to study at…

In preparing this volume, every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, the most recent authorities have been consulted, and it is believed that a faithful view is presented of the various sciences embraced, as far as they are at present developed. It is the intention of the author to keep his book up to the times by constant revision, and to…

No one can dispute that tests should measure important content, and for many (but not all) purposes, tests should be aligned with curricular goals. Thus in many cases, alignment is clearly better than the alternative, and nothing that follows here argues otherwise. Unfortunately, however, this does not imply that alignment is sufficient protection…

This insightful and practical guide for parents shows how they often undermine rather than encourage their teens' success on one of the most stressful standardized tests--the SAT--and what strategies will remedy the problem. In recent years this test has taken on fearsome proportions, matched only by the growing competition for slots at major…

This study analyzed the effects of online formative and summative assessment materials on undergraduates' experiences with attention to learners' testing behaviors (e.g., performance, study habits) and beliefs (e.g., test anxiety, perceived test threat). The results revealed no detriment to students' perceptions of tests or performances on tests…

To document the extent of special test preparation for the SAT I: Reasoning Test, a stratified random sample of some 6,700 students who registered to take the SAT in 1995-96 was surveyed. A smaller companion survey sought information about special preparation programs from a stratified random sample of secondary schools whose students take the…