Scholars have argued for the inclusion of different spoken varieties of English in high-stakes listening tests to better represent the global use of English. However, doing so may introduce additional construct-irrelevant variance due to accent familiarity and the shared first language (L1) advantage, which could threaten test fairness. However,…

Language assessment is increasingly computermediated. This development presents opportunities with new task formats and equally a need for renewed scrutiny of established conventions. Recent recommendations to increase integrated skills assessment in lecture comprehension tests is premised on empirical research that demonstrates enhanced construct…

This article investigates the effect of different accents on high- and low-proficiency second language (L2) learners. It begins with testing the English listening proficiency of Chinese students and then compares the influence of three accented English (a British accent, an Australian accent and an Indian accent) on their listening scores.…

Many overseas students in Higher Education in the UK struggle to understand the compulsory texts for their course, and obtain lower scores for their modules than their monolingual peers. While the existence of this achievement gap is well established in the literature, little is known about the ways in which overseas students in HE with limited…

To pinpoint difficulties in the second language (L2) processing of temporarily ambiguous sentences, this study investigates first language (L1) effects and effects of verb bias, i.e. frequency information about preferential verb complements, on semantic persistence effects in L2 sentence comprehension. We tested 32 L1 German and 32 L1 Turkish…

Students commonly find the language of chemistry challenging and a barrier to developing understanding. This study investigated developments in chemical language understanding by a group of non-traditional students over the duration of a one year pre-undergraduate (Foundation) course at a UK university. The chemistry course was designed to include…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intelligibility and attitude towards four English varieties to Korean-speaking learners (KSLs) of English, who have been exposed mainly to General American (or Korean-accented English) in their English language learning classrooms throughout the primary and secondary schools. A total of 105 Korean…

A considerable amount of studies has been done on the relationship of L2 vocabulary and reading/listening, strategy use and reading/listening, and vocabulary and strategy use in different contexts among different levels of learners; however, little has been known about the relationships among all these variables with the same cohort of learners…

Many children learning English as an additional language (EAL) show reading comprehension difficulties despite adequate decoding. However, the relationship between early language and reading comprehension in this group is not fully understood. The language and literacy skills of 80 children learning English from diverse language backgrounds and 80…

This article describes the development of new scales for assessing the status of a young child's language comprehension and production. Items and sections on the scales were included to reflect advances in research on language acquisition and impairment. The New Reynell Developmental Language Scales (NRDLS) were trialled on 301 children and then…

Providers of tests of languages for academic purposes generally claim to provide evidence on the extent to which students are likely to be able to cope with the future demands of reading in specified real-life contexts. Such claims need to be supported by evidence that the texts employed in the test reflect salient features of the texts the test…

In the componential approach to modelling reading ability, a number of contributory factors have been empirically validated. However, research on their relative contribution to explaining performance on second language reading tests is limited. Furthermore, the contribution of knowledge of syntax has been largely ignored in comparison with the…

There is an acknowledged difficulty in demonstrating that the standard of school exams remains constant over the years. It is a source of debate every summer when exam results come out. There is some evidence that foreign language exams, and French in particular, have declined in standard since the 1980s, but empirical measures to demonstrate this…