testing

This study analyzed the overlap of motion lexicon, namely manner and path verbs’ frequency profiles, in English high school textbooks (9th-12th grade) and English university entrance exams (2010-2019) in Turkey through AntwordProfile r, a corpus linguistic tool. The manner verbs were sampled from Levin’s study (1993) while the path verbs were gathered from Talmy’s book (2001). The frequency of motion verbs in official teaching materials was compared with their frequency in exam materials using SPSS. The results indicate that the mismatch of motion verbs between the textbook and exam corpora is statistically significant in terms of manner verb frequency levels (p < .000). While path verbs scored, on average, higher in descriptive statistics in the textbook corpus, there was no statistical significance observed. The findings suggest that whenever the students take English exam, they may be more likely to be under a higher cognitive load and may be forced to develop the negative backwash effect since what is taught is not tested. This, consequently, raises concerns regarding the content validity of exams and other issues related to the reliability and validity of the national English exams. The findings of this study have implications for material developers and test takers.

The objective of this study was to validate a bilingual Spanish-English version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) considering its potential use as a discriminator between learners in terms of language competence. This version was designed based on the two forms available on one of the creators’ websites as well as considering practices recommended regarding the elimination of cognates and loans. A one-way ANOVA test was used to confirm the test’s capacity to discriminate among learners of different linguistic competence. Additionally, Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) was conducted to revise the existence of only one underlying variable. As a result of this study, a VST version for Spanish speakers consisting of 9 vocabulary frequency levels is shared. This version is in line with validation standards put forward in previous research. It is expected that this instrument will help future studies that seek to measure Spanish speakers’ competence in English as a foreign or second language without having to deal with the interference of other intervening factors.