Term 3

Week Date Room Presenter Topic
1 26 April NO SESSION
2 2 May
(Wednesday)
3:30 – 5pm
SR10 Judit Kormos & Costas Gabrielatos (Joint session with SLLAT) Corpus-based analysis of the use of the present continuous construction in oral language proficiency exams
3 10 May SR4 Tania Horak Washback and washforward? Why study washback – based on a study of the (former) Skills for Life ESOL exams in England.
4 17 May SR4 Theresa Weiler Qualitative research in construct validation: Combining expert judgements and intro-/retrospection by test takers
5 24 May SR4 Gareth McCray Validity in reading comprehension items: triangulation of eye-tracking and stimulated recall data
6 31 May READING WEEK – NO SESSION
7 7 June SR4 Kamran Khan Life in the UK – A journey to citizenship: Approaches to the citizenship test
8 14 June SR4 Anchana Rukthong A review of research on integrated test tasks
9 21 June SR4 TBA MA TEFL/TESOL work-in-progress presentations
10 28 June SR4 Tineke & Luke TBA

 

Term 2

Week Date Room Presenter Topic
1 19 Jan Library B017 Various Introductions and research plans for 2012
2 26 Jan BN SR21 Zahra Al-Lawati The use of the case study method in a language testing PhD
3 2 Feb BN SR2 Tineke Brunfaut & Luke Harding The use of visuals in listening tasks (discussion session)
4 9 Feb BN SR5 Karen Dunn Factor analysis and SEM: starting out and troubleshooting
5 16 Feb BN SR21
6 23 Feb READING WEEK
7 1 Mar BN SR15 Luke Harding The challenge of English as an International Language for language testing
8 8 Mar BN SR21 Gareth McCray Multilevel IRT in the explanation of cross-national and cross-linguistic DIF in reading comprehension in the PISA 2009 study
9 15 Mar BN SR15 Charles Alderson & Tineke Brunfaut Components of reading in first and second language, test item difficulty and overall reading ability
10 22 Mar BN SR15

 

Term 1

Week Date Room Presenter Topic
1 11 Oct 22 Luke Harding Defining the language assessment literacy gap: Evidence from a parliamentary enquiry
2 18 Oct 25 Charles Alderson Towards a theory of diagnosis
4 1 Nov 25 Tineke Brunfaut
and Andrea Révész
Judging the necessary information in listening items
5 8 Nov 12 Tineke Brunfaut
and Andrea Révész
Judging the necessary information in listening items (Part 2)
7 22  Nov Lancaster
House
Whole group Surprise party!
8 29 Nov 12 Gareth McCray Eye-tracking as a research tool in reading comprehension
9 6 Dec 16 Karen Dunn Explaining item difficulty with random item IRT models:  An example using vocabulary test data