Argument-based validation requires test developers and researchers to specify what is entailed in test interpretation and use. Doing so has been shown to yield advantages (Chapelle, Enright, & Jamieson, 2010), but it also requires an analysis of how the concerns of language testers can be conceptualized in the terms used to construct a…

Psychometric tests related to vocabulary assessments are, for the most part, restricted in their use by trained professionals and/or are costly. These restrictions limit their use, especially for research purposes. To circumvent these limitations, the Raney Vocabulary Measure was created for assessing vocabulary proficiency, specifically for…

The purpose of the present study was two-fold: (a) First, it examined fairness of Special English Test (SET) of Iranian National University Entrance Exam (INUEE) by analyzing Differential Item Functioning (DIF) with reading comprehension section of this test (b) second, it explored test takers' attitudes towards possible sources of unfairness and…

This study attempted to examine the modulation of emotional effects on L2 lexical attrition. For this purpose, a cross-sectional approach was adopted to analyze emotional effects on L2 lexical attrition with a 500-word vocabulary test taken by 188 Chinese-English bilinguals. As indicated by the results, the modulation of emotional effects on L2…

The production of a well-constructed narrative is the culmination of several years of language acquisition and is an important milestone in children's development. There is no current description of narrative development for Catalan speaking children. This study collected elicited narratives in Catalan from 118 children aged 4;0-10;11. Narratives…

The present article reported an exploratory investigation into the nature of the reading comprehension strategies of English Foreign Language learners across proficiency levels. The aim of this study was to probe possible differences between elementary, intermediate, and expert readers' use of cluster strategy in the First Certificate English…

This study represents the inaugural attempt at assessing the authenticity of the tasks encompassed in the IELTS Speaking Module. The evaluation is conducted from the vantage points of applied linguistics and general education, and serves to enhance comprehension of authenticity and authentic assessment. In order to achieve this objective, an…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of test anxiety that high school male and female students experience in English and mathematics classes in Saudi high schools. The study examined test anxiety in both subjects from motivational antecedents and cultural factors that cause test anxiety among students. A mixed-methods study was…

This research investigated the impact of processing instruction (PI) on the acquisition of the English third-person singular present tense by Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners and whether this effect would extend to the acquisition of other language components. This study featured the pretest-immediate-posttest design and…

According to rational adaptation approaches of language processing, readers adjust their expectations of upcoming information depending on the distributional properties of the preceding language input. However, adaptation to sentence structures has not been systematically attested, especially not in second-language (L2) processing. To further our…

Task modality (oral vs. writing) has been found to affect the production, nature and resolution of the language-related episodes (LREs) produced by adult learners in collaborative interaction, a finding also attested in very recent and still limited research with young learners, a population that deserves greater attention in the literature.…

While previous research has provided insights into vocabulary learning through extensive reading, the differential effects of word frequency and word class on active form and passive meaning word recognition remain less understood. By evaluating learners' post-test performance in active form recognition and passive meaning recognition, this study…

Metacognitive skills are important for text comprehension, especially at university where most learning processes are unsupervised, and students rely on self-control and regulation when reading for comprehension. In today's universities, English as L2 has become the vehicle language for teaching and learning. However, some studies have concluded…

Given the significant global influence of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CEFR) on English language education, this study deals with aligning a university's academic reading tests to the CEFR. It aimed at validating the test construct of the academic reading tests in relation to the…

The current study examined the phonolexical processing of Mandarin segments and tones by English speakers at different Mandarin proficiency levels. Eleven English speakers naive to Mandarin, 15 intermediate and 9 advanced second language (L2) learners participated in a word-learning experiment. After learning the sound and meaning of 16 Mandarin…