ELL’s PhD student won Duolingo Dissertation Award

Congratulations to Liu Tingting who won the Duolingo English Test Doctoral Dissertation Award.

Tingting is supervised by A/P Vahid Aryadoust and her doctoral research aims to investigate the effects of test methods on test-takers’ response processes during L2 listening assessment. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, the study integrates psychometrics, sensor technologies, and verbal reports to illuminate test-takers’ cognitive processes, test-taking strategies, and emotional responses during test-taking. By synthesizing multifaceted evidence, this study aspires to expand the evidential basis and methodology in the investigation of response processes, one of the major sources of validity listed in Standards for Educational and Psychological Test. The research has implications for accumulating validity evidence from response processes to inform test development and test validation.