Articles

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

Markers’ criteria in assessing English essays: an exploratory study of the higher secondary school certificate (HSCC) in the Punjab province of Pakistan

Marking of essays is mainly carried out by human raters who bring in their own subjective and idiosyncratic evaluation criteria, which sometimes lead to discrepancy. This discrepancy may in turn raise issues l...

Authors: Miguel Fernandez and Athar Munir Siddiqui

Calibrating the CEFR against the China Standards of English for College English vocabulary education in China

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) (Council of Europe 2001) has, over the past decade, come to be widely used as a reference tool for teaching, learning and assessment (Alderson 2002; North 2014...

Authors: Wen Zhao, Boran Wang, David Coniam and Bingxue Xie

Developing common listening ability scales for Chinese learners of English

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 assessm...

Authors: Lianzhen He and Dajian Chen

Developing classroom language assessment benchmarks for Japanese teachers of English as a foreign language

Since the Japanese government has called for English to be taught through English (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2003), there has been increasing interest in English language ...

Authors: Yuzo Kimura, Yoshiyuki Nakata, Osamu Ikeno, Naoyuki Naganuma and Stephen Andrews

Looking beyond scores: validating a CEFR-based university speaking assessment in Mainland China

The present study examined the validity of a university-based speaking assessment (Test of Oral Proficiency in English, TOPE for short) in mainland China. The speaking assessment was developed to meet the stan...

Authors: Li Liu and Guodong Jia

Developing the China Standards of English: challenges at macropolitical and micropolitical levels

A project has recently been proposed by the National Education Examinations Authority, P. R. China, to develop a national framework of reference for English language education, provisionally called China Stand...

Authors: Yan Jin, Zunmin Wu, Charles Alderson and Weiwei Song

Using grounded theory to validate Bachman and Palmer’s (1996) strategic competence in EFL graph-writing

Research studies (e.g., Phakiti, Language Testing 25(2):237–272, 2008a; Phakiti, Language Assessment Quarterly 5(1): 20–42, 2008b; Purpura, Learner strategy use and performance on language tests: a structural ...

Authors: Fereshteh Tadayon and Hamdollah Ravand

Investigating washback to the learner from the IELTS test in the Japanese tertiary context

This study investigated the consequential validity of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Academic exam, specifically focusing on washback upon learners’ test preparation strategies and s...

Authors: David Allen

Consequences of test use: a case study of employers’ voice on the social impact of English certification exit requirements in Taiwan

This study investigates the social impact of a policy requiring university graduates to pass an English proficiency test by examining the consequences of test use in the workplace in Taiwan.

Authors: Yi-Ching Pan and Carsten Roever

Validity evidence of Criterion® for assessing L2 writing proficiency in a Japanese university context

While numerous articles on Criterion® have been published and its validity evidence has accumulated, test users need to obtain relevant validity evidence for their local context and develop their own validity ...

Authors: Rie Koizumi, Yo In’nami, Keiko Asano and Toshie Agawa

Genre analysis of writing tasks in Japanese university entrance examinations

English language writing is important in university entrance examinations in Japan and influences what learners and teachers do in English classes. This is especially noticeable in secondary education in Japan...

Authors: Hideo Watanabe

Factor structure of the Test of English for Academic Purposes (TEAP®) test in relation to the TOEFL iBT® test

This study examined the factor structure of the Test of English for Academic Purposes (TEAP®) test—a recently developed academic English test measuring four skills among Japanese university applicants—and comp...

Authors: Yo In’nami, Rie Koizumi and Keita Nakamura

Validity argument for the VELC Test® score interpretations and uses

Placement testing is a crucial issue in Japanese universities. In the majority of language programs, classes are streamed by proficiency levels based on students’ placement test score for efficient instruction...

Authors: Takaaki Kumazawa, Tetsuhito Shizuka, Masamichi Mochizuki and Atsushi Mizumoto

Developing evidence for a validity argument for an English placement exam from multi-year test performance data

This study investigated the factor structure and factorial invariance of an English Placement Exam (EPE) from 1998 to 2011 to provide evidence for both the appropriateness of the test scores interpretations an...

Authors: James M. Sims and Antony John Kunnan

How interactive discussions support writing development: the application of Dynamic Assessment for learning Chinese rhetoric

This study examined the use of student-teacher interactions through dynamic assessment (DA) to diagnose and promote the learner’s comprehension on Chinese writing patterns. Debates over the uses of standardize...

Authors: Yu-Ting Kao

Chinese university students’ perceptions of assessment tasks and classroom assessment environment

Classroom assessment tasks and environment are central to supporting student learning, yet are under-studied at the tertiary level, especially in China’s test-driven culture. This study explores the relationsh...

Authors: Liying Cheng, Yongfei Wu and Xiaoqian Liu

An analysis of the differences among L2 listening comprehension test formats

The present study aims to investigate which variables affect English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ listening comprehension test performance. It examines two types of variables: (1) test formats and (2)...

Authors: Kei Mihara

Raising the bar: language testing experience and second language motivation among South Korean young adolescents

Drawing on second language (L2) motivation constructs modelled on Dörnyei’s (2009) L2 Motivational Self System, this study explores the relationship between language testing experience and the motivation to le...

Authors: John F Haggerty and Janna Fox

Test-taker perception of what test items measure: a potential impact of face validity on student learning

High-stakes tests have an immense washback effect on what students learn and affect the content of student learning. However, if students fail to recognize the abilities that the test developers intend to meas...

Authors: Takanori Sato and Naoki Ikeda

Assessing in-class participation for EFL: considerations of effectiveness and fairness for different learning styles

This study investigates the effectiveness and fairness of teacher-led assessment of students’ in-class participation and its effect on actual participation levels and language test scores, taking into account ...

Authors: Peter R Crosthwaite, Daniel R Bailey and Ashley Meeker

How language proficiency contributes to Chinese students’ academic success in Korean universities

The present study investigated the key determinants of Chinese students’ academic success in terms of GPA and the number of credit hours earned in Korean Universities. The determinants investigated included ge...

Authors: Wei Yan and Liying Cheng

An enduring lens for a continuing problem: Close analysis of conceptually scored cloze items

This paper provides an example of close analysis of student attempts to fill the gaps that comprise a cloze test. Such analysis may assist diagnosis of the difficulties that groups of students experience with spe...

Authors: John M O’Toole, Junyu Cheng and Gjyn O’Toole

Rubrics in the classroom: do teachers really follow them?

For language teachers, using rubrics has become the norm in assessing performance-based work. When using rubrics, one question stakeholders have is to what extent teachers are true to the rubrics. For classroo...

Authors: Heejeong Jeong

Rater reliability and score discrepancy under holistic and analytic scoring of second language writing

Previous studies comparing holistic scoring to analytic scoring of second language writing have given mixed results. Some of them suffer from methodological drawbacks, such as limited writing sample size, limi...

Authors: Bo Zhang, Yunnan Xiao and Juan Luo

The effect of a national education policy on language test performance: a fairness perspective

Project 211 is one of the most important educational policies in China, which aims at selecting a small number of “key universities” for sustainable development in the 21st century. These selecte...

Authors: Xiaomei Song and Lianzhen He

Language for Specific Purpose (LSP) performance assessment in Asian call centres: strong and weak definitions

LSP performance assessment has become a special focus for language testers in recent years where experts have debated how testing tools and processes can be strengthened to more accurately and more validly ass...

Authors: Jane E Lockwood

Computer-delivered or face-to-face: effects of delivery mode on the testing of second language speaking

The use of computers has increased in speaking assessments; however, there are concerns about how the absence of an interlocutor affects performance on speaking tests.

Authors: Yujia Zhou

Self-assessment as academic community building: a study from a Japanese liberal arts university

Student self-assessment has been heralded as a way of increasing student ownership of the learning process, enhancing metacognative awareness of their learning progress as well as promoting learner autonomy. I...

Authors: Chris C Hale