Language proficiency testing serves an important function of classifying examinees into different categories of ability. However, misclassification is to some extent inevitable and may have important consequences for stakeholders. Recent research suggests that classification efficacy may be enhanced substantially using computerized adaptive…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread disruptions to the educational system in Nebraska and across the world. At the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, schools in Nebraska were forced to replace on-site instruction with virtual instruction. During the 2020-2021 academic year, many students learned online or under hybrid learning formats.…

The use of standardized assessments to monitor the success and productivity of public school systems in the United States is arguably a necessary component of state accountability systems. This research study is not intended to challenge the compulsion of accountability via testing, but the results of this study do raise questions regarding the…

This qualitative case study through Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) investigated the reading process of three Chinese-Mandarin-speaking college English learners (ELs) of varied English language proficiency. In the conversations that occurred during the oral reading of selected texts, the researcher explored students' perceptions about reading…

Vocabulary plays an important role in reading comprehension in both the L1 and the L2 (Murphy, 2018). In measuring vocabulary knowledge, however, researchers typically focus on mono-lexical units where vocabulary assessments tend not to take into account multi-word expressions which include phrasal verbs, collocations, and idioms. Omitting these…

Studies have shown that reading comprehension is the most difficult section of the Paper-Based Test (PBT) TOEFL. Therefore, this research aimed to identify which sub-skill in reading comprehension poses the greatest challenges for the students and how this sub-skill correlates to other reading comprehension sub-skills. To achieve this purpose,…

English learners with learning disabilities (LD) have well-documented difficulties comprehending text. This study examined the effects of an intensive reading intervention (Reading Intervention for Adolescents [RIA]) on reading outcomes (word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension) for ninth-grade ELs with LD (n = 85). In the RIA, students…

Vocabulary's relationship to reading proficiency is frequently cited as a justification for the assessment of L2 written receptive vocabulary knowledge. However, to date, there has been relatively little research regarding which modalities of vocabulary knowledge have the strongest correlations to reading proficiency, and observed differences have…

Reading and writing are distinct skill areas that influence each other across development. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are noted to exhibit challenges in both skill areas, though relatively few studies have examined relationships between reading and writing skills. This study adopted a reading-to-writing framework to examine if…

An essential hypothesis of modern language assessment theory pertains to the interaction between strategy use ability (strategic competence) and second language knowledge. However, how they interact with each other is rarely explored. Drawing on relevant research in the literature, in this paper we proposed three interaction patterns (i.e.,…

In this large-scale study of students from Title 1 schools (N = 14,773), we used multiple-group latent change score (LCS) modeling to investigate the developmental relations between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in students with a school-identified learning disability (LD; n = 627) and typically developing students (n = 14,146).…

The note- and test-taking skills of typically functioning undergraduates are significantly and positively related to handwriting speed, listening comprehension, background knowledge and sustained attention. This study attempted to replicate these findings with two groups of high school students--those with and without the diagnosis of a learning…

Three mode comparability studies were conducted on the following Saturday national ACT test dates: October 26, 2019, December 14, 2019, and February 8, 2020. The primary goal of these studies was to evaluate whether ACT scores exhibited mode effects between paper and online testing that would necessitate statistical adjustments to the online…

The purpose of this study is to examine the appropriateness of using the "TOEFL Primary®" tests to evaluate the language abilities of students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) through an online-delivered curriculum, the VIPKid Major Course (MC). Data include student test scores on the TOEFL Primary Listening and Reading tests…

In 1997, a cross-national assessment of educational achievement in Latin America and the Caribbean found that rural schools in Colombia outperformed urban schools in tests of reading and mathematics, except in very large cities. Given a long history of urban/rural inequality in the region, Colombia's rural school advantage attracted substantial…