Over the years, various approaches to validation have emerged in psychological and educational assessment research, which can be classified into traditional approaches and modern approaches. Traditional approaches view validity as a multicomponential concept including, for example, content, construct, and predictive validity, while modern approaches conceptualize it as a unitary concept evaluated through argumentation. Drawing on the modern approach, this book builds a validity argument for an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) listening test sample. The book provides some insights into the listening sub-skills that the test engages, the psychometric dimensionality of the test, variables that predict item difficulty parameters, bias across age, nationality, test experience, and gender, as well as predictive-referenced evidence of validity. A variety of techniques including the Rasch model and structural equation modelling are used to answer the research questions and to build a validity argument framework; this argument organizes the thematically related findings into a coherent treatment of the validity of the listening test. The book presents the first treatment of validity argument and related analytical tools in one volume and maps the psychometric/statistical analysis tools onto the validity argument framework. It also provides an extensive literature review of listening comprehension, validation, and psychometric modeling and proposes both methods for developing and validating self-assessment instruments and novel approaches to improving the quality of language assessments.

Listening in a second language is challenge for students and teachers alike. This book provides a personal account of an action research intervention involving listening strategy instruction that investigated the viability of this innovative pedagogy in the Japanese university context.

This volume reports research that informs the development of reading and listening assessment in IELTS. This volume brings together a set of eight IELTS-related research studies - four on reading and four on listening - conducted between 2005 and 2010. Findings from these studies provide valuable evidence on the validity, reliability, impact and practicality of the IELTS test; they are also instrumental in highlighting aspects needing attention, and thus directly inform the continuing evolution of the IELTS reading and listening tests. The volume reviews and comments on the specific contribution of each study to the ongoing process of IELTS reading and listening test design and development.

Research-Driven Pedagogy: Implications of L2A Theory and Research for the Teaching of Language Skills brings together the essentials of second language acquisition (SLA) theory, research, and second language (L2) pedagogy. Uniquely, the design of this book helps researchers and practitioners make explicit connections between theory, research, and practice; learn about and conduct classroom research to contribute to the relevance and applicability of SLA research; and improve current L2 curriculum and instruction in light of current theory and research. The volume offers critical reviews of the most relevant, current SLA theory and research about receptive, productive, complementary, and nonverbal communication skills, as well as willingness to communicate (WTC). Each chapter is formatted to include five major topics about each language skill: (1) major theories, (2) critical reviews of salient/current research, (3) commonly-used data collection and analysis techniques, (4) summary of specific pedagogical implications of pertinent research and theory, and (5) theory and research-driven scenarios/activities that can be used in teaching. A teacher or a researcher can pick any chapter in this volume to learn about the most important language skills (e.g., reading, writing, nonverbal communication), while having all-in-one place access to almost everything they would need.

This volume examines the nature of second language listening proficiency and how it can be assessed. The book highlights the need for test developers to provide a clear explication of the ability constructs which underpin the tests they offer in the public domain. This is increasingly necessary if claims about the validity of test score interpretation and use are to be supported both logically and with empirical evidence. It operationalises a comprehensive test validation framework which adopts a socio-cognitive perspective. The framework embraces six core components, examining and then analysing Cambridge ESOL listening tasks from the following perspectives: Test Taker; Cognitive Validity; Context Validity; Scoring Validity; Criterion-related Validity; and Consequential Validity.

This book explores the effectiveness of listen-to-summarize tasks as a tool to assess lecture comprehension ability. It especially focuses on listen-to-summarize tasks that represent listeners’ meaning building and the discourse construction of the lecture for listening assessment purposes. It discusses in depth the nature of lecture comprehension and introduces the approaches to assessing it. It also presents teachers’ and students’ perceptions of listen-to-summarize task demands and their respective implications. By observing interactions between test-takers’ cognitive processes and the task itself, the book explores the effectiveness of these tasks. It also examines the discrepancy in cognitive processes between different language competence levels in detail, shedding light upon current research on lecture comprehension assessment and offering insights into listening comprehension instruction.