A research report on the development of the Test of English for Academic Purposes (TEAP) writing test for Japanese university entrants

Rigorous and iterative test design, accompanied by systematic trialing procedures, produced a pilot version of the test which demonstrated acceptable context and cognitive validity for use as an English for academic purposes (EAP) writing test for students wishing to enter Japanese universities. A study carried out on the scoring validity of the rating of the TEAP Writing Test indicated acceptable levels of inter‐ and intra‐marker reliability and demonstrated that receiving institutions could depend on the consistency of the results obtained on the test. study carried out on the contextual complexity parameters (lexical, grammatical, and cohesive) of scripts allocated to different bands on the TEAP Writing Test rating scale indicated that there were significant differences between the scripts in adjacent band levels, with the band B1 scripts produced by students being more complex than the band A2 scripts across a broad set of indices.