As measures of general language proficiency, C-tests are ubiquitous in language testing. Speeded C-tests are quite recent developments in the field and are deemed to be more discriminatory and provide more accurate diagnostic information than power C-tests especially with high-ability participants. Item response theory modeling of speeded C-tests…

Grades provide students with information about their level of performance. However, grades may also make students more aware of how well they have estimated their performance, their so-called calibration accuracy. This longitudinal quasi-experimental study, set in secondary education, examined how to increase students' awareness of the accuracy of…

Large-scale language testing uses statistical information to account for the quality of an assessment system. In this reflection article, I explain how basic statistics can be used meaningfully in the context of classroom language assessment. The paper explores a series of statistical calculations that can be used to examine test scores and…

This study investigated the impact of English Language proficiency testing on the pronunciation performance of undergraduates in South-west. Nigeria. The study was a descriptive survey research design. The target population size was 1243 (200-level) undergraduates drawn from eight tertiary institutions. The instruments used for data collection…

Rater training is essential in ensuring the quality of constructed response scoring. Most of the current knowledge about rater training comes from experimental contexts with an emphasis on short-term effects. Few sources are available for empirical evidence on whether and how raters become more accurate as they gain scoring experiences or what…

Since its modern inception in the late nineteenth century, research on word associations has developed into a large and diverse area of study, including work with both applied linguistic and psycholinguistic orientations. However, despite significant recent interest in the use of word association to investigate second language (L2) vocabulary…

This study at a Canadian university grew out of the need to know whether students acquired academic vocabulary incidentally through text exposure (extensive reading) in class. The ability to explicitly teach all the words on the academic word list is an unreasonable expectation for a one-semester course. This study, therefore, investigated whether…

The assessment of speaking skills in foreign language testing has always had some pros (testing learners' speaking skills doubles the validity of any language test) and cons (many testrelevant/irrelevant variables interfere) since it is a multi-dimensional process. In the meantime, exploring grader behaviours while scoring learners' speaking…

Based on an exceptional cache of documents charting Cambridge Assessment's examinations in 1938, this article uncovers evidence of the board's early, pioneering work with displaced learners. The newly discovered documents form part of an archive collection already catalogued, relating to the work of Jack Roach who was responsible for the Cambridge…

In this process-based study, we introduced a collocation tool with a new interface and advanced search features and examined how a class of EFL college students interacted with it. To elicit their tool consultation behaviors, a vocabulary test with collocation questions was designed. The students' use of the tool to answer the vocabulary questions…

Researchers have used different measures to examine participants' second-language (L2) proficiency, yet it remains unclear how these different measures influence research results on the effect of L2 proficiency on the target variable. The present research explored the modulation effect of four different measures of L2 Chinese proficiency on…

This qualitative study reports an investigation of the nature of interactional competence at various levels of achievement in the context of role-play speaking assessment. The focal point of this study is on how examinees jointly accomplish the interactional work involved in proposal sequences in role-play interaction. Based on a conversation…

Recent research in second language acquisition suggests that a number of speed, breakdown, repair, and composite measures reliably assess fluency and predict proficiency. However, there is little research evidence to indicate which measures best characterize fluency at each assessed level of proficiency and which can consistently distinguish one…

Purpose: Conducting in-depth grammatical analyses based on language samples can be time consuming. Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) and the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) analyses provide detailed information regarding the grammatical profiles of children and can be conducted using free computer-based software. Here, we provide a tutorial…

The research aims to investigate whether Students' Readiness toward National Examination (A Case Study in SMPN 2 Palopo). The problem statement of the research was, "How are their readiness in facing national examination?" This research used the Descriptive Quantitative Method. The population of this research was 167 students from the…