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Playing a vital role in the process of developing a test, needs analysis is often paid attention to in the first phases of planning language tests, especially large-scale ones. In the context of the project entitled “Developing Standardized Tests of Proficiency for Vietnamese Users of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese”, a needs analysis of Vietnamese users of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese was implemented. Specifically, the reported study’s goal was to investigate the activities in which Vietnamese adults frequently use their skills of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese and examine whether there were differences across activities and languages. Surveys were established with questions of frequency on particular activities either suggested by the researchers or proposed by the respondents themselves. Collected responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and ANOVA. The results disclosed the extent to which language users utilized their language skills in different activities and the significant differences in the use frequency across different activities within each language and across languages for particular activities. The findings have served as a strong foundation and useful reference for the task design in the test development phase of the project.

Playing a vital role in assuring reliability of language performance assessment, rater training has been a topic of interest in research on large-scale testing. Similarly, in the context of VSTEP, the effectiveness of the rater training program has been of great concern. Thus, this research was conducted to investigate the impact of the VSTEP speaking rating scale training session in the rater training program provided by University of Languages and International Studies - Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Data were collected from 37 rater trainees of the program. Their ratings before and after the training session on the VSTEP.3-5 speaking rating scales were then compared. Particularly, dimensions of score reliability, criterion difficulty, rater severity, rater fit, rater bias, and score band separation were analyzed. Positive results were detected when the post-training ratings were shown to be more reliable, consistent, and distinguishable. Improvements were more noticeable for the score band separation and slighter in other aspects. Meaningful implications in terms of both future practices of rater training and rater training research methodology could be drawn from the study.