The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of rater training in an L2 performance assessment and to examine the eligibility of L2 users of English as raters in L2 performance assessment. Rater training was conducted in order for raters to clearly understand the criteria, the evaluation items, and the evaluation procedure. In this…

Adolescents (N = 46; M = 12.46 years) who had previously participated in a longitudinal study of autobiographical memory development narrated their early childhood memories, interpreted life events, and completed a family history questionnaire and language assessment. Three distinct components of adolescent memory emerged: (1) age of earliest…

International students encounter language-related problems in their academic studies. Specific problem areas have been identified and possible underlying causes have been explored. The present study investigates the impact of two variables--length of study and academic disciplines--in relation to the problems. The findings from a survey and…

Tiering is a multi-stage test design whereby teachers allocate students to a particular difficulty level (tier) of a test. This approach to the challenge of delivering assessments to students with a heterogeneous ability distribution is normal practice in UK public examinations at the age of 16. This study uses Item Response Theory number-correct…

Motivated by cognitive theories of graph comprehension, this study systematically manipulated characteristics of a line graph description task in a speaking test in ways to mitigate the influence of graph familiarity, a potential source of construct-irrelevant variance. It extends Xi (2005), which found that the differences in holistic scores on…

Fingertip Facts is a compendium of some of the most frequently requested data sets from the Utah State Office of Education. Data sets in this year's Fingertip Facts include: Core CRT Language Arts Testing, 2012; Core CRT Mathematics Testing, 2012; 2012 Public Education General Fund; 2011-2012 Enrollment Demographics; Public Schools by Grade Level,…

This study examined the second language (L2) development of adult learners of Spanish at three levels of proficiency during and after a semester of instruction. A fundamental goal was to identify cognitive and psychosocial individual differences (IDs) that can explain between-learner variation over time in order to expand our understanding of the…

This paper makes a study of the rater reliability in scoring composition in the test of English as a foreign language (EFL) and focuses on the inter-rater reliability as well as several interactions between raters and the other facets involved (that is examinees, rating criteria and rating methods). Results showed that raters were fairly…

This study investigated whether semantic information presented along with novel printed nonwords facilitates orthographic learning and examined predictors of individual differences in this important literacy skill. A sample of 35 fourth graders was tested on a variety of language and literacy tests, and participants were then exposed to 10 target…

There are normally two major research reasons for assessing second and foreign language (L2) knowledge: either to gauge a participant's actual level of competence/proficiency or to assess language development over a period of time. In testing, the corresponding contrasts are typically referred to as proficiency tests on the one hand and…

This paper examines the quality of tests that Hong Kong teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) produce for their own EFL students. The paper examines the effects on graduate teachers of a language testing programme where participants produced objective tests, proceeding through the stages of test specification, moderation, and item…

Purpose: The paper sought to investigate TESL teachers' knowledge and understanding of the Malaysian School Based Oral English Assessment (SBOEA) after five years into its implementation in upper secondary ESL classrooms in Malaysian public schools Method: The descriptive study involved a total of 80 TESL trained teachers from the 19 schools…

This research project undertook a review and synthesis of previous research on the effectiveness of feedback for individual writing development. The work plan was divided into two main phases. First, we surveyed all available studies that have investigated the effectiveness of writing feedback, including both quantitative and qualitative research,…

Although researchers have begun to explore the implementation of dynamic assessment (DA) with foreign language learners, few of these studies have occurred in the language classroom. Whereas DA is typically implemented in dyads, promising research in the field of foreign language learning suggests that DA may promote development with groups of…

I welcome the feedback from Downey et al. on my analysis of the "Versant for English" Test (formerly called the PhonePass Test), as it provides opportunities to engage in dialogue on differing notions of language performance and authenticity and address the implications of technological expediency influencing and shaping the design of test tasks.…