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The listening comprehension section of the TOEFL has traditionally involved audio presentations of language without accompanying visual stimuli. Now that TOEFL is computer based, listening comprehension items are being created that include both audio and visual information. A nested cross-over design (participants nested in proficiency, level and form) was used to examine the effects of visual condition (present or absent), type of stimuli (dialogues/short conversations, academic discussions and mini-talks) and language proficiency (high or low) on performance on CBT (Computer-based Test) listening comprehension items. Three two-way interactions were significant: proficiency by type of stimuli, type of stimuli by visual condition and type of stimuli by time. The interaction between type of stimuli by visual condition although weak, was perhaps the most interesting and indicated that the presence of visuals results in facilitation of performance when the visuals bear information that complements the audio portion of the stimulus.

Elicited imitation (EI) has been widely used to examine second language (L2) proficiency and development and was an especially popular method in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, as the field embraced more communicative approaches to both instruction and assessment, the use of EI diminished, and the construct-related validity of EI scores as a representation of language proficiency was called into question. Current uses of EI, while not discounting the importance of communicative activities and assessments, tend to focus on the importance of processing and automaticity. This study presents a systematic review of EI in an effort to clarify the construct and usefulness of EI tasks in L2 research.The review underwent two phases: a narrative review and a meta-analysis. We surveyed 76 theoretical and empirical studies from 1970 to 2014, to investigate the use of EI in particular with respect to the research/assessment context and task features. The results of the narrative review provided a theoretical basis for the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis utilized 24 independent effect sizes based on 1089 participants obtained from 21 studies. To investigate evidence of constructrelated validity for EI, we examined the following: (1) the ability of EI scores to distinguish speakers

Information provided by examination of the skills that underlie holistic scores can be used not only as supporting evidence for the validity of inferences associated with performance tests but also as a way to improve the scoring rubrics, descriptors, and benchmarks associated with scoring scales. As fluency is considered a critical, perhaps foundational, component of speaking proficiency, temporal measures of fluency are expected to be strongly related to holistic ratings of speech quality.This study examines the relationships among selected temporal measures of fluency and holistic scores on a semi-direct measure of oral English proficiency. The spoken responses of 150 respondents to one item on the Oral English Proficiency Test (OEPT) were analyzed for selected temporal measures of fluency. The examinees represented three first language backgrounds (Chinese, Hindi, and English) and the range of scores on the OEPT scale. While strong and moderate correlations between OEPT scores and speech rate, speech time ratio, mean length of run, and the number and length of silent pauses were found, fluency variables alone did not distinguish adjacent levels of the OEPT scale. Temporal measures of fluency may reasonably be selected for the development of automated scoring systems for speech; however, identification of an examinee’s level remains dependent on aspects of performance only partially represented by fluency measures.

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