Pictures are widely used to elicit expressive language skills, and pictures must be established as parallel before changes in ability can be demonstrated by assessment using pictures prompts. Why parallel prompts are required and what it is necessary to do to ensure that prompts are in fact parallel is not widely known. To date, evidence of…

Given the current lack of appropriate assessment tools for measuring deaf children's sign language skills, many test developers have used existing tests of other sign languages as templates to measure the sign language used by deaf people in their country. This article discusses factors that may influence the adaptation of assessment tests from…

This study investigated the effect of dynamic assessment on learners' syntactic knowledge. The main concern of this study was significant difference between dynamic and static assessment and the possible role of these two forms of assessment on the syntactic development of Iranian EFL college preparatory learners. To fulfill the purpose of the…

One consequence of test use in the English-language teaching community is the negative washback of tests on teaching and learning. Test preparation courses are often seen as part of the more general issue of washback. IELTS and TOEFL iBT tests, focusing on communicative competence, are anticipated to have positive washback effect on how English is…

The present study was designed to examine the ways power relations influence politeness strategies in disagreement. The study was an attempt to find out whether different power status of people influences the the choice of appropriate politeness strategies and speech act of disagreement by Iranian EFL learners, in a university setting. A Discourse…

While integrating visual features can be among the most important characteristics of English language textbooks, reviewing the current locally-produced English for Specific Purposes (ESP) ones reveals that they lack such a feature. Enjoying a rich theoretical background including Paivio's dual coding theory as well as Sert's educational semiotics,…

Complement constructions vary significantly in English and Persian. There are more complementation structures in English than in Persian and a complement structure in Persian might have more than one equivalent in English. Producing complement structures (CSs) in English is very difficult for native speakers of Persian, especially in an EFL…

The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether students who enter high school in ninth grade and score proficient or advanced on their CST in English Language Arts remain proficient or advanced 2 years later in 11th grade. The effects of NCLB will be considered as a contributing factor to the difference in student scores. This study was…

A quasi-experimental research study was conducted to investigate the performance of English learners (ELs) on mathematics assessments when using interactive whiteboard (IWB)-based instruction as compared to text-based instruction. A sample of 47 seventh-and eighth-grade EL students from ABC Middle School (name has been changed) was included in…

This study explored relationships between placement decisions in English and reading courses and measures of college achievement and persistence for first-time degree- and certificate-seeking community college students enrolled at a large, public, suburban-serving community college in Maryland. Archived records were examined for students who had…

The relationship between first language (L1) typology, defined as the classification of languages according to their structural characteristics (e.g. phonological systems and writing systems), and the development of second (L2) and third (L3) language skills and literacy proficiency in multilingual children was investigated in this study. The…

This study investigated the effects of processing instruction (PI) and structured input (SI) on the acquisition of the subjunctive in adjectival clauses by 92 second-semester distance learners of Spanish. Computerized visual input enhancement (VIE) was combined with PI and SI in an attempt to increase the salience of the targeted grammatical form…

Today, playing digital games is an important part of many young people's everyday lives. Claims have been made that certain games, in particular massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) provide L2 English learners with a linguistically rich and cognitively challenging virtual environment that may be conducive to L2 learning, as…

This research investigates the extent to which indices of social justice and democratic rights are expressed in Israel in the crucial national English matriculation exam, as perceived by Palestinian Arab high school pupils studying for these exams and their English teachers. The research employed Critical Theory as a paradigm, case study as a…

This article investigates a version of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) listening test for evidence of differential item functioning (DIF) based on gender, nationality, age, and degree of previous exposure to the test. Overall, the listening construct was found to be underrepresented, which is probably an important cause…