This article examines the effects of synonymy (i.e., learning words with and without high-frequency synonyms that were known to the learners) on word knowledge in a study of 84 Japanese students learning English. It employed 10 tests measuring 5 aspects of word knowledge (orthography, paradigmatic association, syntagmatic association, meaning and…

Two kinds of scoring templates were empirically derived from summaries written by experts and students to evaluate the quality of summaries written by the students. This paper reports students' attitudes towards the use of the two templates and its differential statistical effects on the judgment of students' summarization performance. It was…

The possibility of teaching communication strategies and the feasibility of incorporating them into school syllabi have been a controversial issue. In the current study, 60 Iranian students were divided into two thirty-member classes; then two different textbooks, one with specific CS and the other without them, were chosen to be taught in the…

Possible integrated and independent tasks were pilot tested for the writing section of a new generation of the TOEFL[R] (Test of English as a Foreign Language[TM]). This study examines the impact of various rating designs and of the number of tasks and raters on the reliability of writing scores based on integrated and independent tasks from the…

Some educational contexts almost mandate the application of multiple-choice (MC) testing techniques, even if they are deplored by many practitioners in the field. In such contexts especially, research into how well these types of item perform and how their performance may be characterised is both appropriate and desirable. The focus of this paper…

This study describes the reading and test-taking strategies that test takers used on the "Reading" section of the "LanguEdge Courseware" (2002) materials developed to familiarize prospective respondents with the new TOEFL. The investigation focused on strategies used to respond to more traditional "single selection"…

Purpose: To provide the first detailed information about native language abilities of children who are or had been institutionalized. Method: The language of ten 30-month-old children raised in Romanian orphanages was compared with that of 30 chronological-age-matched peers: 10 children who had moved recently from orphanages to foster care, 10…

This study assessed the invariance in the factor structure of the "Test of English as a Foreign Language"™ Internet-based test (TOEFL® iBT) across subgroups of test takers who differed in native language and exposure to the English language. The subgroups were defined by (a) Indo-European and Non-Indo-European language family, (b)…

The study investigates the effect of explicit contrastive analysis and translation activities on the incidental acquisition of single words and collocations. We compared three high school groups of learners of the same L1 and comparable L2 (English) proficiency. Each group represented one instructional condition: meaning focused instruction (MFI),…

This article reports on a case study of negotiation that occurred in peer group oral interactions under assessment conditions. Discourse analysis was used to illustrate how participants negotiated and co-constructed the assessment format itself as well as meaning exchange sequences. Analyses of the data point to the advantage of using peer group…

e mean length of utterance in the Sentence Repetition Task grew from approximately two to three words, and the number of omissions of articles, prepositions and modifiers significantly decreased. After 3;0 years old, omissions of free function words practically disappeared. The results of Study 2 showed that mean length of utterance, omission of…

Providing information to test takers and test score users about the abilities of test takers at different score levels has been a persistent problem in educational and psychological measurement (Carroll, 1993). Since the 1990s Educational Testing Service has been investigating solutions to this problem through the development of proficiency…

The role of explicit and implicit acquisition of grammatical rules in second language learning was examined by assessing high school students performance after several years of study on the correct use of the Spanish verbs "ser" and "estar". These two verbs are essentially equivalent in use to the English verb "to be," but there is a complex set…

This study was conducted in the FL English class of a typical Spanish secondary school. The students translated a short L1 Spanish text into FL English orally as a class, with accompanying dictionary glosses, before writing it down individually. This collaborative translation was supported by the teacher, and any lexical items that were not known…

The French as a Second Language model tests for advanced levels 7, 8, and 9 were designed to evaluate students' language performance, as outlined in the program of studies for Alberta, Canada, in listening and reading comprehension and oral and written production, communication skills, culture, language and general language knowledge. The tests…