Tracing the changes in reading scores and learning style preferences through reading strategy training.

A common challenge for most students in intercultural contexts both in their academic studies ‎and future careers is balancing speaking opportunities for talkative and less talkative students. ‎The differences in individuals’ communication styles due to their backgrounds may lead to ‎some concerns about intercultural competencies. In this respect, this study intends to explore the ‎possible relationship between students' confidence in communication levels, their self-‎perception of English proficiency levels, and cultural styles. For this purpose, three ‎questionnaires were carried out by the participation of 106 students at a state university. The ‎obtained data were analyzed by conducting ANOVA tests. The findings indicated that ‎participants have low to medium levels of English proficiency and as their language levels ‎increase, their cultural self-awareness and cross-cultural communication levels increase as well. ‎In addition, there is a significant relationship between their levels of confidence in ‎communication and having outgoing personalities.

Great emphasis is given to the development of high-stake tests all around the world and in Turkey. However, limited emphasis is given to adequate score reporting. Too much emphasis on rankings and almost no emphasis on performance level descriptors (meaning of the scores) have leaded a "ranking culture" in Turkey. There is an immense need to raise awareness about score reporting and performance level descriptions in Turkey. This study aims to raise awareness about the use of performance level descriptors in a high-stake exam in Turkey, an English proficiency exam. The study sample is consisted of 630 undergraduate students who took the 2016-2017 English proficiency exam of a public university in the southwest of the Turkey. In order to identify the potential exemplars, two types of item mapping methods (i.e. experimental based method and model-based method) were used in the present study. Item grouping for performance level descriptors provided hierarchical and interpretable structure. Using these performance level descriptors, it is possible to give criterion referenced feedback to each student about his/her reading abilities.