In order to motivate university students to improve their English proficiency, the Hong Kong government decided to adopt a common exit English language test for all graduating students. In the process of selecting a suitable measure for this purpose, an empirical study with a sample of over 240 students was conducted to compare two English…

The accessibility of video technology has made it possible to utilize both the auditory and visual channels to present listening texts in the second language (L2) classroom and on L2 listening tests. However, there has been little research investigating the extent to which L2 listeners actually watch the video monitor when presented with a…

Under Title III of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2001b) every state needs to show linkage between state content standards and state English language development standards as input to the development of state English proficiency tests. This article argues that Title III presents a unique opportunity to explore how different…

We examine the relationship between early cognitive development, socioeconomic status (SES), child health, and parenting quality in a developing country. We use a sample of more than 3,000 predominantly poor preschool-aged children from Ecuador, and analyze determinants of their scores on a widely used test of language ability. We find that…

Test validity is predicated on there being a lack of bias in tasks, items, or test content. It is well-known that factors such as test candidates' mother tongue, life experiences, and socialization practices of the wider community may serve to inject subtle interactions between individuals' background and the test content. When the gender of the…

To investigate the practicality of developing short forms of the Porch Index of Communicative Ability, the results from tests previously administered to 222 aphasic patients were analyzed. (Author/LS)

This test, conducted to prove that closed vowels can be heard in fricative utterances as open vowels in explosive utterances, gives further evidence for the closing action of constrictives and the opening action of occlusives. It also reveals a possible articulatory and auditive convergence between consonants and vowels. (Text is in French.)…

The paper notes the difficulties with most formal tests of language skills when applied to the assessment of communication and precommunication skills in individuals with severe and multiple handicaps. General principles for assessment and a flexible assessment device are summarized. The Functional Communication Assessment is offered as a basic…

The development of an empirically based model of communicative competence is discussed in terms of conceptual, statistical, and methodological considerations. A distinction is made between descriptive and working models of communicative competence. Working models attempt to show how components of communicative competence are interrelated…

The prime contention of this paper is that applied linguists are capable of making a more substantial contribution than they have hitherto to the field of Language Skills Measurement. (Author)

The study investigated the effect of "item density" on item difficulty in passage-related language tests. Item density refers to the number and frequency of items in relation to clear text. The format used was a passage with underlinings to signal the language situations out of which the items were constructed. American College Testing…

The possible effects of applying new assessment techniques to second language learning is dramatized by two contrasting scenarios. The first describes a high school Spanish class as we might find it today: the teaching is effective, but the best results are not being obtained. The second scenario is set in the year 1990. Here, applications of…

An administrator's manual and two reading comprehension tests in Spanish and English for use in elementary grades are presented here. The Spanish reading comprehension test was developed, standardized, and normed in Mexico; the English reading comprehension test was translated from the Spanish test. The tests were designed to be used in the…

A forced-choice paired-comparison test containing 252 items was presented to eight subjects. Each item consisted of two geometric figures chosen systematically from a sample of four ellipses and four triangles. The subjects (six female and two male adults who spoke only English) were asked to decide which of the two figures went best with a…