How do untrained listeners report using nonverbal behavior in their perceptions and judgements of L2 ability? I explore this topic and more in my latest article just out in The Modern Language Journal. Read more here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Congrats to guest editors Eunice Jang, Yasuyo Sawski & all authors on this blockbuster issue of #LanguageTesting on the AI revolution! It’s a hefty issue with 7 articles, an opening Editorial & an insightful post-script by @lukeharding.bsky.social. Now out here: journals.sagepub.com/toc/LTJ/curr...

We recruited a large number of layperson listeners to complete transcriptions (one utterance at a time) and comprehensibility ratings of archived Aptis responses and compared those listener-based measures to official scores. Methodologically this is one of my favorite projects!

Our new study on intelligibility and comprehensibility in the @britishcouncil.bsky.social Aptis General exam is out now in SiLA. Intelligibility distinguishes A1/above A1, but it's generally comprehensibility that is associated with higher levels of performance. www.altaanz.org/7_sila_14_1_...

Sycophantic LLMs rob us of the chance to practice what makes us human: thought, revision, interaction, introspection. I’m much more worried about everyone losing those skills than I am about a Terminator-style end of the world.

Accurate. #academia #academy #philsky #philosophysky #philosophy #science

Happy to announce that our article (w/ Sandra Götz & @pekkalintunen.bsky.social) exploring L1 & L2 speech #fluency in monologue + dialogue is now out in SSLA (OA)! Part of the recently completed #FDF2 project (funded by the Research Council of Finland). #FlowLangGroup @utu.fi doi.org/10.1017/S027...

ggplot2 4.0.0 is out and the new `paper`, `ink`, `accent` theme variables look super cool! Just pick 2-3 colors 🎨 to make your plots look great! I'm excited to hook this up to brand.yml 😉

Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life? Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social) Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf... Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...

New issue of Studies in Second Language Acquisition now available 📚 cup.org/47eF6ql #SSLA #appliedlinguistics #LangSky

While I'm dispensing computer advice, to any new graduate students: Save all your article PDFs using the same template. I like LASTNAME YEAR SHORT TITLE/DESCRIPTION, like Labov 1963 Marthas Vineyard Save them all in just one giant folder, not piecemeal by class. Thank me when you're tenured.

The new Cracker Barrel logo is the visual version of a 50 year old saying skibidi.

{tinytable} 0.13.0 for #RStats can now draw interactive tables with sorting, filtering & pages! And the 📦 is still an ultra-simple, powerful, and 0-dep way to create beautiful tables in basically any format: tex, typ, docx, pdf, png, md, etc Gallery & Docs: vincentarelbundock.github.io/tinytable/

Papers often conclude "more research is needed" without explanation. This is a missed opportunity. You are the expert. This is your time to shine. Explain what the remaining uncertainties are, and give justified recommendations on what the research needed to resolve them should look like.

I've said it before, and I will say it again: It's astonishing how emotionally aversive revisions are, even in the best possible case (reviewers are positive and have very actionable remarks). Or at least that's how I work; if anybody has some good recommendations for coping, do let me know 😂

I shouldn't wade into this discourse, but LANGUAGE CHANGES and old people always hate what kids are doing. This is fine, especially if the author intends it to be euphemistic. Language policing always ends in systematic discrimination against marginalized people. We don't want to go down this road!

Now available in OnlineFirst, Shungo Suzuki and colleagues propose a new approach to weakness identification for L2 speaking skills in diagnostic language assessment (DLA), with an AI-driven DLA program that uses contextualized diagnostic feedback to improve lexical use. doi.org/10.1177/0265...

At this point, I might as well -- Here's an infographic showing different ways to include age as a predictor. The top shows two extremes, just as a plain old numerical predictor (imposes linear trajectory) vs. categorical predictor (imposes nothing whatsoever). And then three solutions in between!

Call for Special Issue abstracts is now open! The Language Testing Special Issue theme of 2027 is “Language Assessment and Policy”. Abstract submission deadline: October 1, 2025. journals.sagepub.com/page/ltj/spe...

Our study of English proficiency tests in US R1 university admissions circa late 2023 has been published in #LanguageTesting. Some highlights: - TOEFL, IELTS, DET, PTE are most widely used - Most institutions accept around 5 different tests - Some mismatches in cut scores across tests ...

Let's say you want to include age as a predictor in your model. How do you do that? Here's an illustration of three options -- it's for a paper I'm working on (so if you feel like anything could be tweaked...).

Now available in Online First, Michael Suhan and Mikyung Kim Wolf compare the performance of GPT-4, human ratings, and an existing automated writing evaluation model in scoring the writing responses of young EFL learners on the TOEFL Junior Writing rest. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Kowall et al. published a multi-analyst epi study on the effect of marital status on cardiovascular disease (link.springer.com/article/10.1...). What can be learned from this effort? Check out our new commentary! link.springer.com/article/10.1... with @mendelrandom.bsky.social & Marcus Munafò

Waking up in Salzburg ready for the kickoff of #EALTA2025! Karen Dunn and I are starting our workshop today on modeling clustered and repeated language assessment data in R.

Luke Plonsky has put together a directory of Applied Linguistics graduate programs in the US (in progress! get in touch if you have any others to add) over at Applied Linguistics Press. Great resource for prospective grad students and those interested in taking stock of the field.

Thanks to everybody who chimed in! I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist. So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:>

✨ ATTN Education and Sociolinguistics friends! ✨ I'm hiring a postdoc, to work with the MI Diaries Project! This position is renewable for up to 3 years total. Please share widely! careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc...

The deadline for ECOLT proposals has been extended to April 27th! We look forward to seeing you at Georgetown University in September.

The deadline for ECOLT proposals has been extended to April 27th! We look forward to seeing you at Georgetown University in September.

Remember to submit your proposals for the East Coast Organization of Language Testers conference, which will be held at Georgetown University on September 26, 2025! The deadline is April 20th. sites.google.com/view/ecolt/e...

Join Karen Dunn and me for a pre-conference workshop at EALTA (in beautiful Salzburg!) where we will discuss linear mixed-models and generalized linear mixed models for the analysis of language testing data. ealta-annual-conference.org/registration/

I asked DeepSeek to develop a scale to measure addiction to addiction scale development and of course it delivered.

My ongoing research shows AI programs that claim to evaluate speech during a meeting do so in ways that are (1) not rooted in any real data about how humans talk to each other and (2) discriminatory against people not represented in training data! I'm glad journalists are now reporting on these!

We are looking are a remote ASL instructor this summer. Please share with any networks that you may have. careers.msu.edu/jobs/ast-ins...

The 2nd article of our forthcoming special issue on #fluency for IRAL (eds Peltonen & Wright) is now available ahead of print! A highly welcome addition to the growing body of research on affective factors and fluency by Magdalena Szyszka & @pekkalintunen.bsky.social, based on #FDF2 project data.

Excited that my article with Paula Winke has been published today in Studies in Second Language Acquisition! In this study we examined the relationship between non-language specialists' estimates of L2 language ability and perceived affect. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

People, just stop doing Frontiers special issues. Find a nice diamond open access journal, and self-publish and collaboratively peer review the set of papers you all want to write. Do not give Frontiers money. They add no value. If anything, they hurt your reputation. MDPI is of course even worse.

Diving Deep Into the Relationship Between Speech Fluency and Second Language Proficiency: A Meta‐Analysis - Yan - Language Learning - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Welcome to BlueSky, Language Testing! bsky.app/profile/lang...

#SLRF is back! To be hosted at Northern Arizona University later this year. Call for proposals open: sites.google.com/nau.edu/slrf...

By mapping the meanings of the words used to communicate emotions across more than one-third of the planet’s spoken languages, a study in Science found that there is significant variation in how emotions are expressed across cultures. #ScienceMagArchives scim.ag/41X6dDk

A few papers I think worth reading. Mostly open access. Causal inference is hard: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#LanguageTesting’s Jan 2025 issue is now out. Read what has been happening behind the schemes in my Editorial w/Xun Yan. A highlight of the issue: a tribute to Tim McNamara & reflections on his work by John Pill, @kelliefrost.bsky.social & @susymacqueen.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/toc/ltja/42/1

Confidence intervals are confusing intervals. The reason is because they tell us something about what happens across many confidence intervals, not in any single confidence interval. In the long run, 95% of 95% CI contain a population parameter. 1/n

New Open Science (OS) MOOC for #ERCs Se below the 8 modules on OS practices values, identify the main OS movements and practices, recognize OS practices, and link to your research via @erasmusuni @ERIMResearch https://www.coursera.org/learn/a-starters-guide-to-open-science

Good news, Altmetric has now started watching BlueSky for mentions of publications. And by the way, provides an easy comparison between this and the old site for a recent preprint of mine which I posted simultaneousl at both. Numbers speak by themselves !

Here is a thread of Starter Packs and Lists for Bilingual and Multilingual Educators. Please let me know of any other lists or starter packs that can be added and of any other educators I have missed, especially for langauges other than English. #EAL #ELL #EALD #MLL #ESL #ELT #EFL

Optimist: glass half full Pessimist: glass half empty Corpus Linguist: Which word most frequently appears in the phrase "glass half *"?

It's been great to see our community of applied linguists grow here in Bluesky! Just a week in and this starter pack is now up to nearly 100 accounts.