A feature of the presented study is a comprehensive approach to studying the reliability problem of linguistic testing results due to the several functional and variable factors impact. Contradictions and ambiguous views of scientists on the researched issues determine the relevance of this study. The article highlights the problem of equivalence…

Testing English writing skills could be multi-dimensional; thus, the study aimed to compare students' writing scores calculated according to Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Multi-Facet Rasch Model (MFRM). The research was carried out in 2019 with 100 university students studying at a foreign language preparatory class and four experienced…

There has been controversy around the practice of providing accommodations, with some suggesting that they may give an unfair advantage rather than level the playing field. If that were the case, the assessment results of students with accommodations could be inflated, leading to a detrimental effect on the assessment's validity. This research…

As testing programs transition from paper to online testing, they must study mode comparability to support the exchangeability of scores from different testing modes. To that end, a series of three mode comparability studies was conducted during the 2019-2020 academic year with examinees randomly assigned to take the ACT college admissions exam on…

The roles of grammar in the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) have long been discussed. This study explored viewpoints of five categories of local stakeholders regarding the roles of grammar in the Thai EFL context. Questionnaires were administered to two groups of Thai university students, and focus-group and semi-structured…

Applied linguists have increasingly focused on how the lives of English language teachers and learners are shaped by race and its intersections with other marginalized identities (e.g. Von Esch et al, 2020). Curiously overlooked, however, are the experiences of one particularly stigmatized group in English-majority countries: Muslim women veiled…

Young learners' language aptitude is understudied due to a lack of tests covering this period of life. Young learners, in contrast with adults, are still acquiring their L1. Consequently, a language-dependent aptitude test should be carefully designed for it to be valid. An additional challenge is found when the young learners who are to take the…

Purpose: We examined whether diverse profiles of strengths and weaknesses would emerge when assessing different aspects of morphological awareness in first- through sixth-grade students using a recently developed standardized test, the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling (MATRS; Apel et al., 2021). Method: Four thousand…

This paper represents a summary and discussion of the three studies presented at the morning session of the Fall 2022 JALT Vocabulary SIG. The papers, which were written by Ali Al-Hoorie, Masaki Eguchi, Derek Canning, Stuart McLean, Christopher Nicklin, and Joseph Vitta, represent a range of topics and study designs that are common in recent…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to determine if and to what extent an ELL student's SBELP-RC could predict his or her ACPELA-RC, ACPELA-WP, and ACP-A1. Study participants were ELL students in Grades 9 to 12, attending a Northern Virginia high school. A further purpose of this study was to investigate if and to what extent…

Purpose: This study examined the effect of phonological overlap on English and Spanish expressive vocabulary accuracy as measured by the bilingual Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test--Fourth Edition (EOWPVT-IV). We hypothesized that if languages interact during an expressive vocabulary task, then higher phonological overlap will predict…

Languages differ regarding the depth, structure, and syntactic domains of recursive structures. Even within a single language, some structures allow infinite self-embedding while others are more restricted. For example, when expressing ownership relation, English allows infinite embedding of the prenominal genitive "-s," whereas the…

In its 40th year, "Language Testing" journal has served as the flagship journal for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the field of language testing and assessment. This viewpoint piece, written from the perspective of an emerging scholar, discusses two possible future trends based on evidence going back to the very first issue…

The idea of sources other than the test-takers' knowledge leading to different results on high-stakes tests was the motif based on which the present investigation was initiated on the probable sources of unreliability of a test. For this purpose, the researchers went through a thorough literature review with the aim to identify the issues to be…

It is widely believed that raters' cognition is an important aspect of writing assessment, as it has both logical and temporal priority over scores. Based on a critical review of previous research in this area, it is found that raters' cognition can be boiled to two fundamental issues: building text images and strategies for articulating scores.…