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Placing non-native speakers of English into appropriate classes involves mapping placement test scores onto proficiency levels based on predetermined cut scores. However, studies on how to set boundaries for different levels of proficiency have been lacking in the language testing literature. A top-down approach to standard setting in which a panel of experts set cut scores has dominated the typical standard setting procedure. A less utilized approach is to proceed bottom-up by clustering learners based on test scores. The purpose of this study was to fill this gap by examining Education Testing Services (ETS)’s mapping of TOEFL® iBT Test scores to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) levels. The study examined TOEFL® iBT score data from ICNALE (International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English) and conducted optimal Kernel Density Estimation to find peaks in the distribution of test scores. In addition to the number of peaks, the local minima of the resulting distribution were chosen as boundaries of cut scores for delineating different ability groups. This method of separating scores, also known as contrasting groups, finds clusters of test takers based on maximum differences in scores. The results showed that ETS’ guide for cut scores linking to CEFR levels was comparable to Kernel Density Estimation with some exceptions, namely two out of three cut scores were found to be similar. Implications are discussed in terms of test-centered versus examinee-centered method of standard setting and the need to consider the demographics of the examinee population in determining cut scores.

The interdependency between education and psychology has been valued for a long time and the educational psychology as an interdisciplinary field reconciling these two disciplines has been introduced to the field of teacher education. However, theoretically present in teacher training programs, the practical ways of applying educational psychology has not gained enough attention. The interviews with 21 Iranian EFL teachers and educators reveal that those teachers start their career after doing a teacher education course, do not have enough awareness to deal with learners’ cognitive and emotional problems. Therefore, the researchers tried to put psychological theories into practice through assigning some mini-action research during the teacher education courses. To check the effectiveness of the method, two groups (experimental and control) were selected and then their awareness of psychological issues while reflecting on their teaching process were compared after the treatment. The qualitative findings of the study indicate that the method was successful in increasing pre-service teachers’ psychological awareness towards language teaching. The method is beneficial for those designing and planning teacher education courses.

This study aimed to investigate the syntactic errors that the Iranian deaf and hearing-impaired (DHI) make in their L2 writings. To this purpose, 60 male and female Iranian DHI students with different social status were selected, through convenience sampling procedure, as participants from among the students of a deaf community in Bandar Abbas, Iran. Their general writing performance was assessed through a proficiency test (pre-test) before they received a six-week writing instruction, in which they were provided with model written utterances and common syntactic points such as sentence order, word order, subject/verb agreement, etc. At the end of the treatment, they were given two topics and asked to write short paragraphs (post-test). Then, different syntactic errors were spotted, analyzed and categorized based on Keshavarz’s linguistic taxonomy of errors. The obtained results indicated that the writing quality of the participants improved from pre-test to post-test. It was also found that majority of the participants committed more syntactic omission errors than syntactic addition errors and syntactic substitution errors. It was further found that syntactic errors in written language were not affected by the gender and social class of the participants. The findings of this study provide empirical evidence for teaching syntactic order to deaf and hearing-impaired students in order to enhance their L2 writing performance.

Measurement has been ubiquitous in all areas of education for at least a century. Various methods have been suggested to examine the fairness of education tests especially in high-stakes contexts. The present study has adopted the newly proposed ecological approach to differential item functioning (DIF) to investigate the fairness of the Iranian nationwide university entrance exam. To this end, the actual data from an administration of the test were obtained and analyzed through both traditional logistic regression and latent class analysis (LCA) techniques. The initial DIF analysis through logistic regression revealed that 19 items (out of 70) showed either uniform or non-uniform DIF. Further examination of the sample through LCA showed that the sample is not homogeneous. LCA class enumeration revealed that three classes can be identified in the sample. DIF analysis for separate latent classes showed that three serious differences in the number of DIF items identified in each latent class ranging from zero items in latent class 3 to 43 items in latent class 2. The inclusion of the covariates in the model also showed that latent class membership could be significantly predicted from high school GPA, field of study, and acceptance quota. It is argued that the fairness of the test might be under question. The implications of the findings for the validity of the test are discussed in detail.

The current study investigated the impact of an interventionist model of dynamic assessment, using a repetitive process of pretest-teach-posttest design, on Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension and classroom engagement. To this end, 40 intermediate participants were selected through convenient sampling from among the English majors of a university in Kerman, Iran, and assigned to two control and experimental groups, each including 20 students. Then, during 4-month period, the experimental group was exposed to reading comprehension class, using an interventionist model of DA, while the control group did not receive ant dynamic assessment program. At the end of the treatment, the participants’ scores on the pretest and post-test were statistically compared. The obtained results revealed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on the scales of reading comprehension skill. A change was also observed in the classroom engagement of the experimental group, but not for the control group. Indeed, the results showed that dynamic assessment can boost participants' performance in a practical and effective way, not only in terms of reading performance but also in terms of motivating more classroom engagement among EFL learners. This finding has implications for teachers to design more efficient courses which are the ultimate goal of education.  

Since its inception in 1949, over 1,500 studies have investigated the validity of the GRE General Test to predict its performance criteria in higher education (Klieger, Bridgeman, Tannenbaum, & Cline, 2016). The present review paper sought to examine the predictive validity of the GRE General Test. Factors affecting the predictive validity (e.g., range restriction, compensatory selection, criterion unreliability, substantive and artifactual moderators, bias in testing, coaching effects, socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and a host of other intervening factors such as motivation, communication skills, etc.) have been discussed. A brief overview of GRE revised General Test format is also presented. After an account of the related review of the literature, a critical commentary on the predictive validity of the GRE General Test has been discussed with an emphasis on the role of criterion unreliability and SES factor effects. Keywords: Predictive validity, Graduate Record Examination (GRE), criterion unreliability, range restriction, compensatory selection

Previous research has shown the differential effects of task-related prompts on syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy, and lexical diversity when L2 learners use writing prompts to produce a piece of writing. However, the extent to which the freedom in the selection of prompts affects these linguistic facets in L2 argumentative essays is still unknown. The present study, therefore, was designed to investigate differences between syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy, and lexical diversity in argumentative essays. Seventy-one upper-intermediate male and female Iranian English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learners from Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin and Safir Plus institute in Tehran participated in this study. Five-paragraph essays were used to collect data, and SPSS (version 25) was used to analyze the data. Results of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed statistically significant differences between syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy, and lexical diversity. Results from post-hoc analyses revealed statistically significant differences between lexical diversity and grammatical accuracy as well as lexical diversity and syntactic complexity, but no statistically significant differences were found between grammatical accuracy and syntactic complexity in argumentative essays.

This study aimed to compare the effect of two types of assessment, i.e., self-assessment and peer assessment, on reflective and impulsive EFL learners’ speaking skill. To this end, a group of 51 (24 impulsive and 27 reflective) intermediate EFL learners were selected based on their performance on a PET (Preliminary English Test), and the Impulsiveness Sub-Scale of Eysenck’s Impulsivity Inventory. They were randomly divided into two experimental groups (i.e., self-assessment and peer assessment), each containing impulsive, and reflective learners. In the self-assessment group, the assessment was based on the Speaking Self-Assessment Sheet designed by Babaii, Taghaddomi and Pashmforoosh (2015). In the peer assessment group, the assessment was based on the Peer Assessment Rating Sheet by Yamashiro and Johnson (1997). At the end of the treatment, the participants received the speaking section of another PET as a posttest. The results of two-way ANOVA revealed that (a) the assessment type and cognitive type had no significant interaction, (b) self-assessment and peer assessment had the same effect on impulsive and reflective learners’ speaking skill, (c) irrespective of the assessment type, learners with different cognitive types performed differently, with the reflective learners outperforming their impulsive counterparts.

In order to engage students in higher-level thinking, cognitive activation (CA) strategies have been advanced and utilized in mathematics. CA develops when learners are challenged, confronted with conflicts, asked to think and explain clearly on their learning, and realize connections between new and previous content. Extending the theme to English language teaching (ELT), this study investigated Iranian English language teachers’ knowledge and practice of cognitive activation writing strategies (CAWS). In so doing, a model was proposed based on a questionnaire that was developed and validated in the present study. Through this scale, knowledge and practice of CAWS by 213 English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers were explored. During a pilot phase, the reliability of the questionnaire was calculated to be .78 for the knowledge section and .81 for the practice section. Two items in each section were removed after conducting exploratory factor analysis. Ultimately, the confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the proposed model was fit for the data. Five components were confirmed as constituents of CAWS for the knowledge section, and four components were identified for the practice section. The findings revealed that Iranian EFL teachers were already familiar with the CAWS and purportedly practiced them in their writing classes. Using the scale in the process of writing instruction can provide ELT practitioners with a helpful platform for relating to CA strategies and empowers learners to accomplish tasks such as problem-solving in their writing assignments, similar to what is practiced in mathematics.