the favorable gains gleaned from the provision of pre-task planning time (ptp) have struck a chord with sla researchers as they try to manipulate task features to promote language production and development. in a similar vein, the present study is a two-fold attempt to first compare the effect of the length of pre-task planning time on discourse-analytic measures in narrative written production...

Hs olistic ratings lack sufficient information to measure candidates with the accuracy required for high-stakes certification examinations . When examiners make only one holistic rating ofcandidate performance, decisions about candidate ability are conumed with measurement error. Holistic ratings also make it impossible to determine the basis for the examiners' ratings, and to separate examiner...

Assessing argumentative writing skills is not a straightforward task, as multiple elements need to be considered. In function of providing feedback students and keeping track their progress, evaluating texts in suitable, valid efficient way important. this state-of-the-art exploratory study, 130 written by eleventh graders were assessed means three different rating procedures (i.e., absolute ho...

Westerners’ perceptions tend to focus on salient foreground objects, whereas Asians are more inclined to focus on contexts. We hypothesized that such culturally specific patterns of attention may be afforded by the perceptual environment of each culture. In order to test this hypothesis, we randomly sampled pictures of scenes from small, medium, and large cities in Japan and the United States. ...