ERIC Number: EJ1237987
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Jan
Pages: 25
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0265-5322
EISSN: N/A
Pseudowords and Guessing in the Yes/No Format Vocabulary Test
Zhang, Xian; Liu, Jianda; Ai, Haiyang
Language Testing, v37 n1 p6-30 Jan 2020
The main purpose of this study is to investigate guessing in the Yes/No (YN) format vocabulary test. One-hundred-and-five university students took a YN test, a translation task and a multiple-choice vocabulary size test (MC VST). With matched lexical properties between the real words and the pseudowords, pseudowords could index guessing in the YN test as correlations between false alarms and real word guessing were high (> 0.80). This finding provides important validity evidence for correction formulas that employ false alarm information to adjust the YN test scores. Another important finding is that the neighborhood size of pseudowords was related to false alarm rates, which has useful implications for the designing of future YN tests. Finally, the corrected scores of the YN test correlated highly (> 0.70) with those of the translation task. In comparison, correlations between the YN corrected scores and the MC VST scores were lower, indicating a difference in guessing between the two tests.
Descriptors: Vocabulary Development, Language Tests, Test Format, College Students, Multiple Choice Tests, Correlation, Guessing (Tests), Test Validity, Scores, Translation, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A