ALTAANZ Best Student Journal Article Award
The purpose of the ALTAANZ Best Student Journal Article Award is to recognise a high-quality, peer-reviewed journal article by a student that makes a significant contribution to the field of language testing and assessment. Only students that undertook their studies in an Australian or New Zealand university are eligible for this award.
Details of award & eligibility
The ALTAANZ best student journal article award is awarded every two years. The first award focussed on journal articles that were published in 2023 and 2024. The ALTAANZ committee will next seek submissions in 2027 for articles published in 2025 and 2026.
To be eligible, the journal article must be published in English in a peer-reviewed journal and focus on language testing and assessment. The article can be a conceptual paper or an empirical study. Other than having clear relevance to the field of language testing and assessment, there is no restriction on the nature of the topic or the methodological approach.
Postgraduate students in Masters or PhD programs or undergraduate students in Honours programs at Australian or New Zealand universities are eligible for this award. Work towards the article must have occurred as part of a program at an Australian or New Zealand university. The article has to be submitted to the journal within two years of graduating from the university program. It is therefore possible that the student author has graduated by the time their work undertaken as an enrolled student is published, or the award is under consideration.
The journal article must meet one of the following authorship configurations:
Submissions will be evaluated using the following criteria:
Awardees 2023-2024:
The award committee selected the following winner and runner-up:
Winner: Rothville, K. (2024). Developing a Japanese Vocabulary Levels Test for the purposes of extensive reading. Journal of Extensive Reading, 11(2). 1-15. https://jalt-publications.org/content/index.php/jer/issue/view/17
Citation: The article titled "Developing a Japanese Vocabulary Levels Test for the Purposes of Extensive Reading” by Kimberley Rothville presents a compelling rationale and contextualisation of the development of a Vocabulary Levels Test in the context of Japanese language learning in an English-medium university. The article provides an excellent account of the theoretical and empirical backing for design decisions in relation to the context and purpose of score use, and a careful treatment of how the test scores might be interpreted. In addition to offering directions for future validation activities, the research has useful practical outcomes with actionable implications for both teachers and learners.
Runner-up: Peng, C. X. (2024). Beyond accuracy gains: Investigating the impact of individual and collaborative feedback processing on L2 writing development. Assessing Writing, 61, 100876. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2024.100876
Citation: The article titled “Beyond accuracy gains: Investigating the impact of individual and collaborative feedback processing on L2 writing development” by Carrie Peng offers a worthwhile study of two feedback practices in a Chinese lower secondary EFL context. The comprehensive study captures collaboration, which is unusual in research on written feedback, especially in EFL contexts, making it innovative and providing an original perspective. The paper engages critically with a substantial body of literature on the topic and carefully explains and justifies a range of statistical procedures used. The interpretation of the findings offers impressive depth of insight. The paper highlights the importance of exploring feedback processing in under-researched contexts.
The purpose of the ALTAANZ Best Student Journal Article Award is to recognise a high-quality, peer-reviewed journal article by a student that makes a significant contribution to the field of language testing and assessment. Only students that undertook their studies in an Australian or New Zealand university are eligible for this award.
Details of award & eligibility
The ALTAANZ best student journal article award is awarded every two years. The first award focussed on journal articles that were published in 2023 and 2024. The ALTAANZ committee will next seek submissions in 2027 for articles published in 2025 and 2026.
To be eligible, the journal article must be published in English in a peer-reviewed journal and focus on language testing and assessment. The article can be a conceptual paper or an empirical study. Other than having clear relevance to the field of language testing and assessment, there is no restriction on the nature of the topic or the methodological approach.
Postgraduate students in Masters or PhD programs or undergraduate students in Honours programs at Australian or New Zealand universities are eligible for this award. Work towards the article must have occurred as part of a program at an Australian or New Zealand university. The article has to be submitted to the journal within two years of graduating from the university program. It is therefore possible that the student author has graduated by the time their work undertaken as an enrolled student is published, or the award is under consideration.
The journal article must meet one of the following authorship configurations:
- A single-authored paper by a student (or students) that is based on work completed by the student(s).
- A co-authored paper (e.g., with a supervisor) of which the student is the first author. The student must submit a detailed outline of what aspects of the work were completed by the various authors. It is an expectation that the data collection and analysis work would have been completed solely by the student and that the majority of work towards writing the paper would have been completed by the student. The supervisor/co-author/s must provide a signed statement that the student/students completed 80% of the work towards the article including a brief description of approx. 200 words about the nature of the various contributions.
Submissions will be evaluated using the following criteria:
- Quality of the contextualization, rationale and basis in literature
- Quality of the design, methods (including analysis) and findings and/or quality of the theoretical argument and conceptual development
- Clarity and comprehensiveness of presentation
- The extent to which the work develops or raises awareness of a topic with relevance to the field
Awardees 2023-2024:
The award committee selected the following winner and runner-up:
Winner: Rothville, K. (2024). Developing a Japanese Vocabulary Levels Test for the purposes of extensive reading. Journal of Extensive Reading, 11(2). 1-15. https://jalt-publications.org/content/index.php/jer/issue/view/17
Citation: The article titled "Developing a Japanese Vocabulary Levels Test for the Purposes of Extensive Reading” by Kimberley Rothville presents a compelling rationale and contextualisation of the development of a Vocabulary Levels Test in the context of Japanese language learning in an English-medium university. The article provides an excellent account of the theoretical and empirical backing for design decisions in relation to the context and purpose of score use, and a careful treatment of how the test scores might be interpreted. In addition to offering directions for future validation activities, the research has useful practical outcomes with actionable implications for both teachers and learners.
Runner-up: Peng, C. X. (2024). Beyond accuracy gains: Investigating the impact of individual and collaborative feedback processing on L2 writing development. Assessing Writing, 61, 100876. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2024.100876
Citation: The article titled “Beyond accuracy gains: Investigating the impact of individual and collaborative feedback processing on L2 writing development” by Carrie Peng offers a worthwhile study of two feedback practices in a Chinese lower secondary EFL context. The comprehensive study captures collaboration, which is unusual in research on written feedback, especially in EFL contexts, making it innovative and providing an original perspective. The paper engages critically with a substantial body of literature on the topic and carefully explains and justifies a range of statistical procedures used. The interpretation of the findings offers impressive depth of insight. The paper highlights the importance of exploring feedback processing in under-researched contexts.