Bücher der Reihe Language Testing and Evaluation

Accent and Listening Assessment

This book explores the construct of language in use, specifically as operationalised through different item types in the Austrian Matura. The findings suggest that the tasks under investigation assess grammatical form and meaning at the sub-sentential and sentential level.

The book introduces a framework for examining the validity of tests that aim to assess second-language proficiency development over time and/or in relation to second-language instruction. The book reports the findings of a longitudinal study that examined the sensitivity to change of a test of second-language proficiency development.

C-Tests bestehen aus mehreren kurzen Texten, in denen die zweite Hälfte jedes zweiten Wortes fehlt. Sie gelten in der Regel als objektives, reliables, valides und ökonomisches Instrument zur Messung allgemeiner Sprachkompetenz und werden mittlerweile in einer Vielzahl von Kontexten eingesetzt. Der vorliegende Sammelband illustriert den aktuellen Stand der (anwendungsbezogenen) C-Test-Forschung ¿ mit einem Schwerpunkt auf der zentralen Frage der Konstruktvalidität. C-Tests consist of several short texts in which the second half of every second word has been deleted. As a rule, they are considered to be objective, reliable, valid and economical tests of general language proficiency. C-Tests are currently used in many contexts, including high-stakes applications. The present collection of papers illustrates the state of the art of (application-oriented) C-Test research, with a special focus on construct validity.

This Festschrift for Tim McNamara brings together papers on the social impact of language tests, such as fairness and justice of test use, testing of interaction, and teachers' and students' views of language tests. It also discusses the future of language testing with regard to validity, the rise of social media, and lingua franca language use.

This book describes language test development and language testing research in Austria. It documents large-scale test development for German as a first language, the foreign languages English, French, Italian and Spanish, as well as Latin and Ancient Greek. The accompanying validation research is accommodated in a framework of test validation.

This book explores the development of C-tests for providing efficient measures of foreign language proficiency in eight different languages: Arabic, Bangla, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. These demonstrate innovative and rigorous test development practices in diverse languages.

Motivated by the need for practical suggestions for raising proficiency assessment standards in Second Language Acquisition research, this book introduces an argument-based approach to validity as a way to improve test validation. It exemplifies the approach by validating two distinct score interpretations for a new Russian Elicited Imitation Test.

This book presents a unique scale development project, with a focus on the validation of two rating scales for assessing academic speaking. It reports on a multi-method study designed to scale the level descriptors on the basis of expert judgments and performance data. The characteristics of the levels offer a specification of academic speaking.

The main outcomes of the present research are the Text Classification Profile that includes the qualitative and quantitative description of linguistic characteristics pertinent in Intermediate and Advanced English reading texts and the L.A.S.T. Text Difficulty Index that makes possible the automatic classification of B2 and C1 English reading texts.

This book describes the development and argument-based validation of a web-based test of second language pragmatics for learners of English. The test has a sociopragmatic orientation and strives for broad coverage of the construct by assessing metapragmatic judgment as well as the ability to co-construct discourse.

How can intercultural language learning be accounted for in foreign language teaching? By means of new assessments, the author investigates the development of language competences central to ICC in relation to learning opportunities as experienced by German learners of English. Audiovisual media were found as a major input factor in developing ICC.

Black and Wiliam's (1998) influential article "Inside the Black Box" prompted an increasing interest in assessment processes within the classroom. This book reports on a detailed ethnographic study of Indonesian as a Foreign Language classrooms at two consecutive levels of schooling in Australia.

This study investigates how cognitive and contextual characteristics of multiple-choice reading tasks impact empirical difficulty in a reading test. Results provide evidence of construct validity and are also relevant for teaching practice aiming at the teaching of reading strategies.

The diagnostic assessment of writing is an important aspect of language testing which has often been neclected in the literature. However, it is an area which poses special challenges to practioners both in the classroom and in large-scale testing situations. This book presents a study which set out to develop and validate a rating scale specifically designed for the diagnostic assessment of writing in an academic English setting. The scale was developed by analysing a large number of writing performances produced by both native speakers of English and learners of English as an additional language. The rating scale was then validated using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The study showed that a detailed data-based rating scale is more valid and more useful for diagnostic purposes than the more commonly used impressionistic rating scale.

This volume, written by distinguished scholars, researchers and practitioners in the field of language testing and assessment, includes selected papers presented at the 1st International Conference of Language Testing and Assessment (ICLTA). It is dedicated to the memory of Pavlos Pavlou, esteemed faculty member at the University of Cyprus.

Paired speaking tests are increasingly used in both low- and high-stakes second language assessment contexts. This book presents a study which explores the interactional features of a paired speaking test that were salient to raters and the extent to which raters viewed the performances as separable.

Dieser Band illustriert den aktuellen Stand der C-Test-Forschung. C-Tests bestehen aus mehreren kurzen Texten, in denen fehlende Wortteile zu rekonstruieren sind. This collection of papers illustrates the state of the art of C-Test research. C-Tests consist of several short texts in which the missing parts of words have to be reconstructed.

How did the (old) Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) assess the Chinese proficiency of non-native speakers of Chinese? 30 years of research have been synthesized into an argument-based approach for validity for the HSK, finally yielding into an argument about the validity of the most widespread language proficiency test for Chinese as a foreign language.

This book explores how language test-takers with different extraversion and proficiency levels co-construct interaction in group oral tests. It compares interactions across three tasks and between two group sizes. The findings offer useful implications for international language testing by enhancing our understanding of the group test construct.