ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews that salient response process literature associated with some aspects and provides promising approach to testing non-native speakers called ONPAR that attempts to improve the validity of the scores by introducing possible solutions to a number of the key problems raised in the literature. In examining comprehension, the researchers found that even low English proficient students could access the nuanced meaning of most ONPAR items. Most of the large- and small-scale research to date agrees that without comprehension of what the items are asking, test scores of non-native speakers will tend to remain distorted by their meaning negotiations over languages and diverse demographic, academic, and cultural experiences. Logan-Terry noted that culturally-nuanced details of assessments, such as sequencing of questions and cultural understandings of visuals all contributed to miscues by emergent English speakers. A distinction is made here between linguistic complexity and cognitive content complexity.
