Although literacy achievement has improved in Chile, adolescents' underperformance in reading comprehension is still a serious concern. In English, core academic-language skills (CALS) have been found to significantly predict reading comprehension, even controlling for academic vocabulary knowledge. CALS are high-utility language skills that…

This article examines the effectiveness of a software that supports formative assessment in real-time of learners' vocabulary knowledge through an interactive highlighting method. Students in a classroom are given a passage on their computer screen and asked to highlight the words they do not understand. This information is summarized on the…

As hours per day are inherently a limited resource, increasing daily instruction time reduces the amount of time pupils can dedicate to other activities outside school. We study how the effect of longer school days on achievement varies across students and schools. We exploit a large-scale reform of school schedules that substantially increased…

International studies show that the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on learning has increased in a number of countries and that poverty is a risk factor that puts children's academic performance at risk. However, there are students who, despite living in impoverished conditions, achieve solid academic performance. How they do so is a question…

The validity of TOEIC Bridge™ scores as a measure of English language skill was examined from the standpoint of a unified concept of test validity. In this study, more than 6,000 test takers in 3 Latin American countries (Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador) took 1 form of the TOEIC Bridge test, and their scores were compared to additional information…