The extrapolation of test scores to a target domain—that is, association between test performances and relevant real-world outcomes—is critical to valid score interpretation and use. This study examined the relationship between Duolingo English Test (DET) speaking scores and university stakeholders’ evaluation of DET speaking performances. A total of 190 university stakeholders (45 faculty members, 39 administrative staff, 53 graduate students, 53 undergraduate students) evaluated the comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and academic acceptability of 100 DET test-takers’ speaking performances. Academic acceptability was judged based on speakers’ suitability for communicative roles in the university context including undergraduate study, group work in courses, graduate study, and teaching. Analyses indicated a large correlation between aggregate measures of comprehensibility and acceptability ( r = .98). Acceptability ratings varied according to role: acceptability for teaching was held to a notably higher standard than acceptability for undergraduate study. Stakeholder groups also differed in their ratings, with faculty tending to be more lenient in their ratings of comprehensibility and acceptability than undergraduate students and staff. Finally, both comprehensibility and acceptability measures correlated strongly with speakers’ official DET scores and subscores ( r ⩾ .74–.89), providing some support for the extrapolation of DET scores to academic contexts.

In this study, I investigate the construct validity and fairness pertaining to the use of a variety of Englishes in listening test input. I obtained data from a post-entry English language placement test administered at a public university in the United States. In addition to expectedly familiar American English, the test features Hawai’i, Filipino, and Indian English, which are expectedly less familiar to our test takers, but justified by the context. I used confirmatory factor analysis to test whether the category of unfamiliar English items formed a latent factor distinct from the other category of more familiar American English items. I used Rasch-based differential item functioning analysis to examine item biases as a function of examinees’ place of origin. The results from the confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the unfamiliar English items tapped into the same underlying construct as the familiar English items. The Rasch-based differential item functioning analysis found many instances of item bias among unfamiliar English items with higher proportions of item biases for items targeting narrow comprehension than broad comprehension. However, at the test level, the unfamiliar English items did not substantially influence raw total scores. These findings offer support for a variety of Englishes in listening tests.

This study presents a conceptual replication of Birulés et al.’s (2020, Experiment 2) investigation of native and nonnative listeners’ selective attention to a talker’s mouth with the goal of better understanding the potentially modulating role of proficiency in listeners’ reliance on audiovisual speech cues. Listeners’ eye gaze was recorded while watching two short videos. Findings from one of the videos replicated results from the original study, showing greater attention to the talker’s mouth among L2 than L1 listeners. In both videos, L2 proficiency modulated attention, with more fixations on the mouth among lower proficiency listeners, an effect predicted but not observed in the original study. Collectively, these laboratory-based findings highlight the role of visual speech cues in L2 listening and present evidence that listeners with more limited proficiency may be especially reliant on such cues. These observations warrant future investigations of the benefits of visual speech cues in instructional and assessment contexts.

Continuing international interest in Japanese culture and critical domestic needs for foreign labor motivate Japanese language learning and testing throughout the world. The Japan Foundation (JF, 2020) recently estimated that over 3.8 million students throughout 134 countries are learning Japanese, largely motivated by interests in Japanese popular culture (e.g., anime), the Japanese language, history, literature, art, employment, study, and tourism. While Japanese society is relatively ethnically and linguistically homogeneous, there are over 3 million foreign residents (about 2.4% of the population) including at least 1.4 million foreign workers ranging from blue-collar workers to medical professionals (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare [MHLW], 2019). Japanese higher education is also internationalizing, with nearly 300,000 foreign students enrolled in Japanese universities in 2019 (Japan Student Services Organization [JASSO], 2020). Accordingly, recent estimates suggest there are over 250,000 students in Japanese language programs in Japan (Agency of Cultural Affairs [ACA], 2018).

The study investigates the effects of reverse linguistic stereotyping on on-line spoken word recognition in Tokyo Japanese. Pictures of minimal pitch accent pairs (e.g., /kaki/H*L 'oyster' and /kaki/LH 'persimmon') were placed at the corner of the screen in addition to two distractors (Visual World Paradigm). The belief about the talker's ethnicity was manipulated via a talker image in the center of the screen. Native listeners of Japanese (n = 36) were assigned to either Japanese-looking condition or non-Japanese-looking condition. Talkers included two native talkers and two non-native talkers of Japanese for filler trials and one bilingual talker for critical trials. The results showed no effect of face image. The findings contrast with previous works which exclusively employed off-line tasks. This suggests that reverse linguistic stereotyping may not influence on-line word recognition, but rather later stages of language comprehension.