The Reading Proficiency Interview (RPI) is a new reading proficiency test format that was created in response to the US government's need to rapidly produce a cost effective and credible reading proficiency assessment format for small-population languages. The RPI was developed in response to a requirement by the National Language Service Corps…

Previous test fairness frameworks have greatly expanded the scope of fairness, but do not provide a means to fully integrate fairness investigations and set priorities. This article proposes an approach to guide practitioners on fairness research and practices. This approach treats fairness as an aspect of validity and conceptualizes it as…

Despite the growing interest of the language testing community in standard setting, primarily due to the use of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR-Council of Europe, 2001), the participants' decision-making process in the CEFR standard setting context remains unexplored. This study attempts to fill in this gap by analyzing these…

Gender has been a controversial issue which affects the language learning process. McNamara (1996) has proposed that there are some variables affecting second language performance one of which is sex. In much the same way, it has been reported that gender plays a role in the area of language testing (Brown, 2003; Lumley & O'Sullivan, 2005;…

This study aimed at contrasting the performance of a group of EFL students on a TOEFL exam before and after taking a special TOEFL preparation course depending on Charles Curran's Community Language Learning (CLL) model. According to CLL, the role of the teacher is extended to be like the supportive therapy of a counselor, and the student is…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship(s) between a student's Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) levels of proficiency and Response to Intervention tier (RtI) assignment for academic instruction and the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS) scores. The CALP levels were derived from…

The German /r/ sound is one of the most difficult sounds for American English (AE) speakers who are learning German as a foreign language to produce. The standard German /r/ variant [/R/] and dialectal variant [R] are achieved by varying the tongue constriction degree, while keeping the place of articulation constant [Schiller and Mooshammer…

The Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) is designed to be objective (so it can be administered by a lay native speaker of the language) and equivalent across languages (to allow for a comparison between the languages of a given patient as well as across patients from different institutions). It has been used not only with aphasia but also with any…

This article proposes a distinction between "fairness" and "justice" in relation to language tests. Basing its discussion on the validity theory of Samuel Messick, it discusses the way in which these terms have been used in the existing literature, and their relationship to the concept of validity. Fairness, broadly speaking,…

Testing of second language pragmatic competence is an underexplored but growing area of second language assessment. Tests have focused on assessing learners' sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities but the speech act framework informing most current productive testing instruments in interlanguage pragmatics has been criticized for…

The purpose of this study was to explore whether the results of Tree Based Regression (TBR) analyses, informed by a validated cognitive model, would enhance the interpretation of item difficulties in terms of the cognitive processes involved in answering the reading items included in two forms of the Michigan English Language Assessment Battery…

Despite the recent increase of structural equation modeling (SEM) in language testing and learning research and Kunnan's (1998) call for the proper use of SEM to produce useful findings, there seem to be no reviews about how SEM is applied in these areas or about the extent to which the current application accords with appropriate practices. To…

This article presents the results of a study examining the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (CF) on the simple past tense and the impact beliefs may have on students' uptake of the feedback they receive. A seven-week study was carried out with 42 advanced EFL learners in Vientiane, Laos. Students' beliefs about written CF were first…

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: SAGE Testing, 2014; 2013 Public Education General Fund; 2014-15 Public School Enrollment Demographics; Public Schools by Grade Level, 2013-14; Number of Licensed Educators;…

This paper investigates the differences in academic achievement trajectories from elementary through middle school among English Learner students in four different instructional programs: English Immersion, Transitional Bilingual, Developmental Bilingual, and Dual Immersion programs. Comparing students with the same parental preferences but who…