Language testing research has suggested that placement accuracy can be an important factor in the consequences of placement decision-making. However, previous studies primarily have used a one-shot teacher judgment of placement accuracy, suffering from a lack of students' perspectives of their time-varying experiences. The present study aimed to…

The topic of washback itself and how it applies to oral assessment procedures/contexts is a relevant and important topic for the field of English language teaching, and there have been a number of studies into oral washback in evaluation of students (Khan et al., 2019). Washback effect refers to the impact of testing--whether positive or…

This qualitative study, conducted in Hokkaido, Japan, concerns the investigation of the teacher cognition and practice of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) assessment and the impact of a professional development (PD) program on the participants. The PD program was carried out as a series of seven in-service workshops with five native speakers of…

Purpose: This poetic inquiry investigates second language (L2) learners' experiences of English language learning and examines the role of emotions in the language learning process. Design/methodology: The methodology chosen in the current study is qualitative, case-study research through which 209 English poems written by twenty-one Japanese EFL…

The present study aims to examine how listening comprehension processes (top-down and bottom-up) differ by second language proficiency. To investigate such differences, experiments (listening tasks) followed by questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were conducted. Participants included 18 lower intermediate learners, 19 upper intermediate…

This qualitative study investigated the washback of performance-based assessment used by three English language teachers in Hokkaido, Japan, each of whom implemented their own course-specific assessments. The study employed qualitative research of an in-depth interview with 15 students and a self-reflective method from 3 teachers. Teachers…

This paper analyzes writing tasks in academic writing textbooks for Japanese university students, focusing on the organization and difficulty of these tasks based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). A total of 411 writing tasks from 30 textbooks were coded by two experienced Japanese English teachers. The author…

In this study, we define the term "screener test," elaborate key considerations in test design, and describe how to incorporate the concepts of practicality and argument-based validation to drive an evaluation of screener tests for language assessment. A screener test is defined as a brief assessment designed to identify an examinee as a…

This study investigated the factors, such as students' foreign language enjoyment, their foreign language classroom anxiety, the teacher's language choice (English-only instruction versus English instruction with limited legitimate Japanese support), and demographics that affect improvement in English proficiency in EFL communicative classes.…

This paper is an account of how a group of Japanese English language teachers, who questioned current teacher professional education and English language education reforms, learnt to challenge the dominant discourse and find ways of conducting more democratic teacher professional education. It describes how those teachers, including the author,…

Background: This study aims to develop a low-stakes assessment tool to establish a classroom English language benchmark that Japanese teachers of English can use for their own professional development purposes. To start with, we describe the differences between CLA (Classroom Language Assessment) in Hong Kong and the IDS (Integrative Diagnostic…

English teachers, especially those who teach summary writing to students with relatively lower proficiency in English face difficulty in teaching summary writing and while assessing their students' performances. In the classroom context, an analytic rubric is pedagogically more helpful than a holistic rubric because the teacher can confirm the…

In this study, 249 users of the "TOEFL ITP"® assessment series (e.g., admissions officers, English-language teachers, academic staff) in Japan, Mexico, and Indonesia were surveyed about their uses and opinions of TOEFL ITP scores, followed by in-depth interviews with 21 of these users. Overall, the most common use of the test was as an…

The use of first languages (L1) in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom in Japanese universities is often a source of robust debate. In recent years, there has been an increase in counterarguments against the L2 monolingual EFL classroom and a strengthening of support for L1 usage. This study examines the views of students receiving…

Background: 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, a period covering three government-mandated administrations of a national curriculum (Course of Study). No study has…