In 2015, the "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA) introduced multiple changes in its study design, the most extensive being the transition from paper- to computer-based assessment. We investigated the differences between German students' text responses to eight reading items from the paper-based study in 2012 to text…

Language-use strategies are considered potentially effective approaches that learners select to accomplish a second- or foreign-language task. In the past three decades, there has been a proliferation of research concerned with learners' strategy use at different levels of language ability and the influence of L1 learner strategies on L2 language…

Tests require a special kind of savvy, a kind of critical thinking and knowledge application that is not always a part of classroom reading experiences. Who better to teach you how to prepare your students for reading tests than someone who has written them? Charles Fuhrken has spent years working with several major testing companies and…

A study investigated whether students who were allowed to underline, highlight, make notes in the margin, and indicate where they found their answers in the reading selection of a test scored higher than students who were allowed only to refer to the reading materials to find the correct answers. Subjects were 41 students in 2 classes of college…

The present investigation was intended to provide information on the type of strategies employed by learning disabled (LD) students on standardized, group-administered achievement test items. Of particular interest was level of strategy effectiveness and possible differences in strategy use between LD and non-disabled students. Students attending…

Gives instructions on how to improve student test taking skills, suggesting that students may fare poorly on standardized reading comprehension tests because of inadequate test taking ability. (Author/RB)

Reviews research dealing with test wiseness and concludes that teachers and others who administer tests and those who review results should consider the degree to which test wiseness characteristics might have been operative had a planned effort been undertaken to provide special instruction. (FL)

The usefulness of before-adjunct questions with standardized multiple-choice tests in increasing reading comprehension scores was studied by examining the relative effectiveness of reading test questions first or reading the passage first. Subjects were 210 fourth graders randomly assigned to two treatment groups. The Level 9 Reading Comprehension…

A study was conducted at Queensborough Community College to determine if instruction in taking tests would significantly improve the responses of non-proficient readers to multiple-choice, open-ended, and cloze-type questions. Students enrolled in 18 reading and study skills improvement classes (N=394) were divided into three main groups: the…

This study examined the effects of selected reader and task variables on reading comprehension performance. Several reader and task interaction effects were found to be significant, particularly for lookback conditions and constructed response tasks. Cognitive style interacted with hearing state on tasks involving lookback options. (Author/DWH)

To examine the influence of test wiseness and motivation on Title I students' performance in group standardized tests, the effects of training students and teachers in testing skills and reinforcing student testing behavior were investigated during the administration of the Stanford Achievement Test, Level II, to 597 students. Students were…

Eight fifth grade students participated in a study that investigated the effects of test context on test performance and subjects' perceptions of tests in varying contexts. In the first three contexts, reading of words in isolation was tested using materials drawn from three different informal reading inventories equivalent in difficulty level.…

This paper reports an investigation of inferencing in Form Five of the Reading Comprehension component of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. The first step in the investigation consisted of an analysis of the language of the test to determine how the inferencing strategies employed might serve to mask answers. This preliminary analysis suggested that…