With recent technological advances, researchers have begun to explore the potential use of spoken dialog systems (SDSs) for L2 oral communication assessment. While several studies support the feasibility of building these systems for various types of oral tasks, research on the construct validity of SDS-delivered tasks is still limited. Thus, this…

Construct validity and building validity arguments are some of the main challenges facing the language assessment community. The notion of construct validity and validity arguments arose from research in psychological assessment and developed into the gold standard of validation/validity research in language assessment. At a theoretical level,…

Given the increasing emphasis of communicative competence in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts and the lack of validation research on speaking assessments for adolescent EFL learners, in the current study we examined the validity of the TOEFL Junior® speaking test, a relatively new speaking assessment developed by Educational Testing…

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…

The argument-based approach to validation involves two steps; specification of the proposed interpretations and uses of the test scores as an interpretive argument, and the evaluation of the plausibility of the proposed interpretive argument. More ambitious interpretations and uses tend to involve an extended network of inferences and assumptions…

Despite the current need for reliable and valid test instruments in different countries in order to monitor the sign language acquisition of deaf children, very few tests are commercially available that offer strong evidence for their psychometric properties. This mirrors the current state of affairs for many sign languages, where very little…

The Modern Language Aptitude Test (Paper-and-Pencil Version, henceforth, the MLAT) measures "an individual's ability to learn a foreign language." It targets English-speaking adults (over Grade 9) who are literate. The test has only one form, which has not changed since it was first published by the Psychological Corporation in 1959. The test can…

The primary purpose of this study was to provide preliminary validity evidence for a 140-item form of the Vocabulary Size Test, which is designed to measure written receptive knowledge of the first 14,000 words of English. Nineteen native speakers of English and 178 native speakers of Japanese participated in the study. Analyses based on the Rasch…

This paper describes the development and validation of the Cognate Awareness Test (CAT), which measures cognate awareness in Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELLs) in fourth and fifth grade. An investigation of differential performance on the two subtests of the CAT (cognates and noncognates) provides evidence that the instrument is…

What C-tests actually measure has been an issue of debate for many years. In the present research, the authors examined the hypothesis that C-tests measure general language proficiency. A total of 843 participants from four independent samples took a German C-test along with the TestDaF (Test of German as a Foreign Language). Rasch measurement…

One way of determining construct validity of vocabulary items in language tests is to interview subjects directly after taking the items to ascertain what is known about the target words in question. This approach was combined within the framework of lexical competency in a study of the behavior of lexical items on the Test of English as a Foreign…

Despite increasing interest in interlanguage pragmatics research, research on assessment of this crucial area of second language competence still lags behind assessment of other aspects of learners' developing second language (L2) competence. This study describes the development and validation of a 36-item web-based test of ESL pragmalinguistics,…

Analyzed and validated revised versions of the 2000 Word Level and the University Word Level of Nation's Vocabulary Levels Test, which can be administered for course planning and placement in language programs. Japanese high school and university students (n=496) completed four forms of the 2000 Word Test, and 464 completed four forms of the…