The Department of Linguistics is thrilled to announce that Associate Professor Xun Yan and Dr. Rurik Tywoniw’s (EPT Coordinator) proposal “Comparing the use of the English proficiency test scores in higher education admissions” was selected to be the winner of the 2022 TOEFL Committee of Examiners (COE) Research Grant from Educational Testing Service.

Drs. Yan and Tywoniw will receive $100,000 for two years to lead a multi-institutional investigation on the use of English proficiency tests for admissions (such as TOEFL, IELTS, Duolingo English Test, Pearson Test of English) and the ability of proficiency test scores to predict longitudinal academic performance of over 10,000 international undergraduate students.

To their knowledge, this is the largest-scale investigation on the topic. The study will cover different types of institutions in terms of research status and admission selectivity, and the research team from the English Placement Test (EPT) program will perform quantitative and qualitative analyses on a wide range of data sources to obtain a comprehensive picture of how English proficiency test scores are used during higher education admissions. The TOEFL COE Grant is the most competitive research grant program in the field of language testing and assessment. Each year, the program receives many proposals from around the world, and the review process is very competitive.