Test takers' individual characteristics may have a significant impact on their test performance (e.g. Bachman & Palmer, Language assessment in practice: Developing language assessments and justifying their use in the real world, 2010). However, given their dynamic and context-sensitive nature, different variables of test takers' individual…

Dative alternation between prepositional and double object datives has been a popular topic in second language (L2) acquisition, but only few studies deal with discourse constraints such as the "given-before-new" principle, or given-new (GN) ordering, which describes the tendency to place given information before new information. The…

This study explored second language (L2) competence in discontinuous discursive formulaic sequences, namely Chinese correlative connectives (CCCs; e.g. yinwei . . . suy 'because . . . so'), in relation to the determinants of formulaic sequence acquisition by scrutinizing L2 Chinese learners' performance on two controlled tasks. Mixed-effects…

We examined the effect of learning English as a foreign language in early childhood on children's later English and Chinese achievement and attitude toward English learning in mainland China. A total of 892 children were divided into two groups according to whether they had any English learning experience before they entered elementary school. To…

This study examined the content alignment between an English as a foreign language skills curriculum and a provincial language test in China. When there is misalignment in the content between the standards of a curriculum and a test, conclusions about student abilities and teaching effectiveness can be questioned. To examine this, three categories…

Using the single-group pre-posttest design, this exploratory study examined whether L2 learners of English can learn a speech act by experiencing perlocutionary effects of the act as feedback (observing their interlocutor's reactions to their choice of speech act expressions). Sixty undergraduate English learners at a university in China played a…

Although research on listening skills has been frequently conducted to discover the nature of listening comprehension, there is little study about listening genre competence which is related with knowledge about listening text types. In order to find out whether listening skills and listening genre competence are related, cognitive diagnosis, a…

As one type of the most extensively used sentences, English questions are must-learn grammatical structures for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). However, it is commonly seen that English learners across proficiency levels produce ungrammatical English questions. To determine the source of learners' erroneous production, we…

The objectives of this study were: (i) to compare the scores on the test between students who took a Chinese Traditional Culture course (including ancient fairy tales, traditional festivals, and ancient etiquette) and students who did not, (ii) to examine students' performance on the traditional culture after taking the Chinese Traditional Culture…

We present "doing language testing" sequences; L2 learners decide for themselves to test themselves or each other explicitly on new linguistic items, outside the official task cycle with no professional present, investing extra time and energy. We examine how and why pairs of learners do this, and its impact on their learning. They use…

Based on 312 samples, this study investigated the relationship between two dimensions of L2 vocabulary knowledge (VK) and listening comprehension (LC) by comparing written and oral vocabulary measurements and further examined the mediating effect of L2 vocabulary fluency (VF) by using Bootstrapping and Monte Carlo Method. Results show that: (1)…

Inspired by Fulcher's (2012) data-driven approach to language assessment literacy (LAL), I introduce learners' voices as a way to better understand teachers' LAL. I also incorporate learnings from recent literature on child development regarding research with children to suggest that we consider assessment with learners in LAL and language…

This study is intended to explore the influence of partners' L2 proficiency on test-takers' performance and on their interaction patterns in paired oral assessment, and it tries to analyze the underlying causes on the basis of Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and Storch's patterns of interaction. An experiment including…

This study explores how primary school children develop their metacognitive knowledge and vocabulary knowledge and how both types of knowledge are dynamically correlated from 1st to 4th grade. The longitudinal sample included 426 first-grade students (M = 6.6 years, SD = 0.51; 50.2% boys, 49.7% girls) from five public primary schools in China. A…

Informed by Segalowitz's (Cognitive bases of second language fluency, Routledge, 2010) L2 speech production model and MacIntyre et al.'s (Mod Lang J 82(4):545-562, 1998. https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1998.tb05543.x) L2 willingness to communicate model, this study sought to understand the influence of cognitive, affective and sociocultural…