Lexical proficiency, as a cognitive construct, is poorly understood. However, lexical proficiency is an important element of language proficiency and fluency, especially for second language (L2) learners. Lexical proficiency is also an important attribute of L2 academic achievement. Generally speaking, lexical proficiency comprises breadth of…

This article investigates assessor decision making when using and applying a marking guide for a note-taking task in a specific purpose English language listening test. In contexts where note-taking items are used, a marking guide is intended to stipulate what kind of response should be accepted as evidence of the ability under test. However,…

This report examines 174 young children's language outcomes in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, the first randomized trial of foster placement after institutional care. Age of foster placement was highly correlated with language outcomes. Placement by 15 months led to similar expressive and receptive language test scores as typical age…

How bilingual children represent procedural versus narrative text is important for both pedagogical and theoretical reasons. To examine this issue, bilingual children and children learning English as a Second Language (ESL) read Hebrew sentences comprising either a procedural (i.e., "how to") or a narrative text (i.e., description of "doing") and…

Mandated literacy assessment is now a ubiquitous practice in many western educational systems. While educational researchers, principals, teachers and education unions continue to offer vociferous resistance in some nations, in others it is now commonplace in the educational landscape and built into the rhythms of the school year. This paper is…

In this study the authors investigated whether training preschool children in the use of mental state lexicon plays a significant role in bringing about advanced conceptual understanding of mental terms and improved performance on theory-of-mind tasks. A total of 70 participants belonging to two age groups (3 and 4 years old) were randomly…

Many children with specific language impairment (SLI) show impairments in discriminating auditorily presented stimuli. The present study investigates whether these discrimination problems are speech specific or of a general auditory nature. This was studied using a linguistic and nonlinguistic contrast that were matched for acoustic complexity in…

Since the Spanish Educational system is changing and promoting the use of online tests, it was necessary to study the transformation of test items in the "Spanish University Entrance Examination" (IB P.A.U.) to diminish the effect of test delivery changes (through its computerization) in order to affect the least the current model. The…

In 2010, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) State Collaborative conducted a content analysis of the new Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics. Now, many state, local, and school education leaders are using an online data reporting system to compare their prior state…

This study examines the use of a yes/no test as a placement measure in a university Spanish foreign language program. Yes/no tests measure word recognition and have been shown to correlate well with other language proficiency tests. The main advantage of using a yes/no test as a placement tool is its ease of creation and administration. We…

The current study tested the assumption that bilinguals with dementia regress to using primarily the dominant language. Spanish-English bilinguals with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 29), and matched bilingual controls (n = 42) named Boston Naming Test pictures in their dominant and nondominant languages. Surprisingly, differences between…

In this article, we adapt a concept designed to structure language testing more effectively, the "Assessment Use Argument" ("AUA"), as a framework for the development and/or use of sign language assessments for deaf children who are taught in a sign bilingual education setting. By drawing on data from a recent investigation of…

Studies often report that bilingual participants possess a smaller vocabulary in the language of testing than monolinguals, especially in research with children. However, each study is based on a small sample so it is difficult to determine whether the vocabulary difference is due to sampling error. We report the results of an analysis of 1,738…

Hesitation strategies appear in speech in the form of filled or unfilled pauses, paralinguistic markers like nervous laughter or coughing, or signals which are used to justify units in the coming utterances in which the speaker struggles to produce. The main functions of these forms of hesitation strategies have been associated with speech…

This study designed a model of teaching reading for university EFL students based on the English curriculum at the Faculty of Languages and Literature and the concept of the team-based learning in order to improve the reading comprehension of the students. What kind of teaching model can help students to improve their reading comprehension? The…