The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) is a multi-level, multi-purpose Chinese proficiency test developed by the Center for Language Education and Cooperation (previously the Office of Chinese Language Council International and, henceforth, referred to by its colloquial name "Hanban"). It assesses reading, writing, and listening skills of…

Our world has been transformed by technologies incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) within mass communication, employment, entertainment and many other aspects of our daily lives. However, within the domain of education, it seems that our ways of working and, particularly, assessing have hardly changed at all. We continue to prize…

This test review focuses on the current version (2009) of [Chinese characters omitted] (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi), literally translated as the Chinese Language Proficiency Test and abbreviated as HSK. Tailored to non-native speakers of the Chinese language, this test consists of six proficiency levels (Levels 1 and 2 as beginners, Levels 3 and 4 as…

In his philosophical novel, Thus spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche (1883-85), famously wrote, 'God is dead,' signifying that God is no longer credible as an absolute moral compass. Over a century later, Paikeday (1985), proclaimed that "The native speaker is dead!" in his book title, implying that the native speaker as the arbiter of what is…

This article presents a critical review of the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS), a large scale standardized English language proficiency (ELP) assessment developed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and administered since 2004. TELPAS is used as an annual summative assessment for all English Learners (ELs) in grades…

Dynamic assessment (DA) has been implemented to diagnose language-related issues and to promote second language (L2) learners' development through intervention (Poehner, 2008). The goal is to evaluate not only what a learner can do on his or her own but also how far he or she can go with instructional intervention. Recently, scholars have…

In recent years, continuing advances in technology have increased the capacity to automate the extraction of a range of linguistic features of texts and thus have provided the impetus for the substantial growth of corpus linguistics. While corpus linguistic tools and methods have been used extensively in second language learning research, they…

Word Associates Format (WAF) tests are often used to measure second language learners' vocabulary depth with a focus on their network knowledge. Yet, there were often many variations in the specific forms of the tests and the ways they were used, which tended to have an impact on learners' response behaviors and, more importantly, the psychometric…

The 2018 Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System (NSCAS) Summative technical report documents the processes and procedures implemented to support the Spring 2018 NSCAS Summative English Language Arts (ELA), Mathematics, and Science assessments by NWEA under the supervision of the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE). The technical report…

The "Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fifth Edition" (CELF-5; Wiig, Semel, & Secord, 2013) is a recently updated battery of tests designed to assess, diagnose, and measure changes in language and communication in individuals 5 to 21 years of age. Designed to identify language strengths and weaknesses, determine service…

This article investigates ways to improve the assessment of English learner students' English language proficiency given the current movement of creating next-generation English language proficiency assessments in the Common Core era. In particular, this article discusses the integration of scaffolding strategies, which are prevalently utilized as…

Business, like many other fields in higher education, continues to rely largely on conventional testing methods for assessing student learning. In the current article, another evaluation approach--the oral exam--is examined as a means for building and evaluating the professional communication and oral dialogue skills needed and utilized by…

Elicited imitation (EI) has been widely used to examine second language (L2) proficiency and development and was an especially popular method in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, as the field embraced more communicative approaches to both instruction and assessment, the use of EI diminished, and the construct-related validity of EI scores as a…

This article outlines the current state of and recent developments in the use of corpora for language assessment and considers future directions with a special focus on computational methodology. Because corpora began to make inroads into language assessment in the 1990s, test developers have increasingly used them as a reference resource to…

Oral language skills are important to consider in school psychology practice, as they are directly tied to many areas of academic functioning. For example, research has demonstrated that oral language skills in early elementary school predict reading comprehension in later grades (Kendeou, van den Broek, White, & Lynch, 2009). With a…