Articles

How to evaluate the TEFL students’ translations: through analytic, holistic or combined method?

Translation quality assessment (TQA) suffers from subjectivity in both neighboring disciplines: ‘TEFL’ and ‘Translation Studies, and more empirical studies are required to get closer to objectivity in this dom...

Authors: Mojtaba Amini

Validity of the listening module of international English language testing system: multiple sources of evidence

A critical issue in International English Language Testing System (IELTS) lies in the significance of the validity of IELTS listening comprehension test (hereafter IELTS LCM). However IELTS listening validity ...

Authors: Sayyed Mohammad Alavi, Shiva Kaivanpanah and Ali Panahi Masjedlou

A quantitative analysis of TOEFL iBT using an interpretive model of test validity

Validity is a notable concept in language testing which has concerned many researchers and scholars in the field of language testing due to its importance in decision making process. Tests’ results always intr...

Authors: Mohammad Reza Esfandiari, Mohammad Javad Riasati, Helia Vaezian and Forough Rahimi

Language assessment in the new English curriculum in Iran: managerial, institutional, and professional barriers

Assessment policies and practices are key to the success of curriculum innovations. Therefore, large-scale ELT innovations always include changes in assessment too. Thinking that Iranian students were not enab...

Authors: Kioumars Razavipour and Karim Rezagah

Designing and validating a potential formative evaluation inventory for teacher competences

Inadequacy of authority-based defensive teaching and summative and product-based evaluation such as certification and observation measures in providing information about the actual teaching teachers do was an ...

Authors: Zohre Mohamadi and Negin Malekshahi

IELTS economic washback: a case study on English major students at King Faisal University in Al-Hasa, Saudi Arabia

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is a standardized high-stakes test, which is used for the purpose of measuring the language proficiency of candidates who wish to study or work in an e...

Authors: Ahmad Alsagoafi

The examination system in Bangladesh and its impact: on curriculum, students, teachers and society

Examinations are designed to test knowledge and skills, but in some cases they acquire a power of their own that influences curriculum and attitudes to learning and teaching and that stabilised by widely held ...

Authors: Md Al Amin and Janinka Greenwood

Reviewing the IELTS speaking test in East Asia: theoretical and practice-based insights

This paper reviews the International English Language Testing System’s speaking sub-test in the East Asia region with reference to theoretical and practice-based perspectives and identifies future research opp...

Authors: Ethan Douglas Quaid

Developing a test of L2 Chinese pragmatic comprehension ability

This study aims to develop a test for assessing pragmatic comprehension ability in Chinese as a second language (L2). Following the framework of an argument-based approach to test validation, this study attemp...

Authors: Shuai Li

Application of diffusion of innovation theory to educational accountability: the case of EFL education in Japan

This study investigates how the criterion-referenced (CR) approach has impacted relationships between goals, classroom practices, and student achievement in English education in Japan from 1994 to the present,...

Authors: Miyuki Sasaki

Teachers’ writing proficiency and assessment ability: the missing link in teachers’ written corrective feedback practice in an Iranian EFL context

Teachers’ writing proficiency and writing assessment ability and their role in improving writing instruction in second language learning classrooms are issues that have not been investigated empirically and ri...

Authors: Majid Nemati, Sayyed Mohammad Alavi, Hassan Mohebbi and Ali Panahi Masjedlou

ESL students’ oral performance in English language school-based assessment: results of an empirical study

The English language school-based assessment (SBA) component of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) Examination is innovative in that the assessment tasks involve assessing English oral langua...

Authors: Zhengdong Gan, Emily Pey Tee Oon and Chris Davison

Foreword to the Special Issue “The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) for English Language Assessment in China” of Language Testing in Asia

Authors: J. Charles Alderson

Exploring the adaptability of the CEFR in the construction of a writing ability scale for test for English majors

The CEFR, ever since its inception, has had profound impact on language teaching, learning, and assessment not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world. This study focuses on the adaptability of CEF...

Authors: Shen Zou and Wenxing Zhang

A comparability study between the General English Proficiency Test- Advanced and the Internet-Based Test of English as a Foreign Language

This study examined the comparability of reading and writing tasks of two English language proficiency tests—the General English Proficiency Test-A (GEPT-A) developed by Language Training Center, Taipei and th...

Authors: Antony John Kunnan and Nathan Carr

Development of a home literacy environment questionnaire for Tamil-speaking kindergarten children

The development of emergent literacy skills depends upon the literacy environments and experiences of children at home. Children’s home literacy environment is closely related to the development of various asp...

Authors: B. Buvaneswari and Prakash Padakannaya

Can the National Center Test in Japan be replaced by commercially available private English tests of four skills? In the case of TOEFL Junior Comprehensive

The National Center Test is a test that high school graduates take in order to be matriculated into the majority of universities in Japan. Its English section (NCT), though, is scheduled to be replaced by comm...

Authors: Nobuhiro Kamiya

A case for the use of the ability-in language user-in context orientation in game-based assessment

Dynamic assessments in general, and game-based assessment (GBA) specifically, compel us to rethink prevailing language testing conceptualizations of context. Context has traditionally been portrayed with a cog...

Authors: Alexandra Lay, Elizabeth Patton and Micheline Chalhoub-Deville

University faculty members’ perspectives on English language demands in content courses and a reform of university entrance examinations in Japan: a needs analysis

This small-scale needs analysis study examined content course faculty members’ perspectives on English language demands in their courses and their perceptions of the introduction of four-skill English language...

Authors: Yasuyo Sawaki

Construct and content in context: implications for language learning, teaching and assessment in China

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 importa...

Authors: Yan Jin

Assessing English reading comprehension by Chinese EFL learners in computerized dynamic assessment

Predicated on Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD), dynamic assessment (DA) integrates teaching with assessment in a single activity by providing mediation to help learners perform beyond their indepe...

Authors: Yanfeng Yang and David D. Qian

Using keystroke logging to understand writers’ processes on a reading-into-writing test

Integrated reading-into-writing tasks are increasingly used in large-scale language proficiency tests. Such tasks are said to possess higher authenticity as they reflect real-life writing conditions better tha...

Authors: Sathena Chan

The relationships between test performance and students’ perceptions of learning motivation, test value, and test anxiety in the context of the English benchmark requirement for graduation in Taiwan’s universities

Having been influenced by the trend of internationalization of higher education, most universities in Taiwan have implemented an English benchmark requirement for graduation, which requires students to demonst...

Authors: Jessica Wu and Matt Chia-Lung Lee

Developing reading proficiency scales for EFL learners in China

Since its publication in 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages has exerted tremendous influence on language learning, teaching, and assessment in China. However, problems were also ide...

Authors: Yongqiang Zeng and Tingting Fan

An overview of differential item functioning in multistage computer adaptive testing using three-parameter logistic item response theory

As perfectly summarised by Ida Lawrence, “Testing is growing by leaps and bounds across the world. There is a realization that a nation’s well-being depends crucially on the educational achievement of its popu...

Authors: Karim Sadeghi and Zainab Abolfazli Khonbi