Language programs need multiple test forms for secure administrations and effective placement decisions, but can they have confidence that scores on alternate test forms have the same meaning? In large-scale testing programs, various equating methods are available to ensure the comparability of forms. The choice of equating method is informed by…

A systematic review of research on oral language assessments for four-to-eight-year- old children was undertaken to support a six-year action research project aimed toward co-creating classroom oral language assessment tools with teachers in northern rural and Indigenous Canadian communities. Through an extensive screening process, 10 studies were…

This small-scale qualitative study considers feedback and results reported for two major large-scale English language tests administered in Japan: the Global Test of English Communication for Students (GTECfS) and the Eiken Test in Practical English Proficiency (Eiken). Specifically, it examines current score-reporting practices in student and…

This study aimed at investigating English grammar knowledge of a group of Thai university students. The three main research questions revolved around their knowledge of English grammar, the kinds of difficulties they had encountered in using the grammar as well as their perceptions of the roles of grammar in using English. The participants were…

Students from the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Program targeted in the present study are expected to achieve a C1 level of English proficiency according to the Common European Framework (CEF). However, only a five per cent of the students has evidenced this level on the institutional English exam (Ileusco Test, henceforth IT) for the past…

Unlike linguistic fossilization, pragmatic fossilization has received scant attention in fossilization research. To bridge this gap, the present study adopted a typical-error method of fossilization research to identify the most frequent errors in pragmatic routines committed by Persian-speaking learners of L2 English and explore the sources of…

This systematic review study sought to examine the teaching of English language skills in Saudi Arabia by systematically analyzing the previous studies on language skills which were published within the past ten years and identify the research areas to be bridged in the future. The study employed the systematic review approach. The search strategy…

This study examines the effects of the timing of explicit instruction (EI) on grammatical accuracy. A total of 123 learners were divided into two groups: those with some productive knowledge of past-counterfactual conditionals (+Prior Knowledge) and those without such knowledge (-Prior Knowledge). Each group was divided into four conditions. Two…

The present study aimed to examine whether distributed practice works better than massed practice for proceduralization of grammatical knowledge. Learners of Japanese as a second language were trained on an element of Japanese morphology under either massed or distributed practice conditions. Results showed that massed practice led to accurate…

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of peer support on university level students' English language achievements. An experimental model with pretest-posttest experimental and control group was used with 800 students who were studying at a university in Istanbul vicinity. As experiment group, 400 students (200 of whom…

Objectives: This study investigates the effects of assistive technology on improving communication skills of children with autism. Methods: Twelve children with autism (mean age=8 years) randomly assigned to either experimental groups or a control group (n=4 per group). The study confirmed validity and stability for the language skills scale for…

This paper reports an investigation into whether a test of productive vocabulary size using a category generation task can be useful and effective. A category generation task is a simple task where learners are asked to name as many as words as they can from a prescribed category such as "animals" or "body" parts. The virtue of…

Background: The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) developed by Council of Europe has been gaining popularity since its publication in 2001, and reshaping the practice in language teaching, learning and assessment not only across the European continent but also in many other places such as Japan (CEFR-J project). Some pioneering work…

Context is vitally important in conceptualizing the construct and specifying the content of language learning, teaching, and assessment. In a rapidly changing globalized world, it is difficult but very important to identify and capture the unique features of local contexts. In this article, the experience of China will be used to discuss the…

This academic article is aiming at creating a reading comprehension lesson with a new paradigm called the P3C2R+GIRD model developed by a 9-year-experience author in teaching English reading skill who always found that one of the problems of EFL students in learning English language is the lack of reading comprehension which is an important skill…