Dan Isbell
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danielrisbell.bsky.social
Dan Isbell
@danielrisbell.bsky.social
900 followers 590 following 1.3K posts
Associate Professor of Second Language Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, specializing in language assessment. Associate Editor at Language Learning journal (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14679922). Views own. https://isbell.github.io/
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Reposted by Dan Isbell
davidho.bsky.social
ICE kills people
Medical examiner believes death of man in ICE custody was homicide, recording says
A fellow detainee says he witnessed Geraldo Lunas Campos being choked to death by guards at the ICE detention center in Texas on Jan. 3.
wapo.st
January 16, 2026 at 1:06 AM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
mattansb.msbstats.info
Too many significance tests!!

Made this little graphic for my #stats class, showing the various kinds of (N)HST and how interpreting confidence intervals can replace all of them.

Made with #rstats #ggplot (duh)
January 12, 2026 at 8:55 PM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
mixedlinguist.bsky.social
The American Dialect Society has chosen its word of the year: slop…used as both a freestanding noun, and a productive suffix! Check out all the words we nominated at the link! And while I nominated “that’s AI” (and it won for most useful), there’s no fake news here!
January 10, 2026 at 3:18 AM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
Folks at Duolingo have authored a critical commentary on an article by Bruce et al (2025) concerning stakeholder perceptions of English proficiency tests in UK higher ed that has been referenced in a lot of press releases and higher ed reporting.

doi.org/10.1093/elt/...
Advancing integrity in language assessment: Response to Bruce et al.
Abstract. This Readers Respond article engages with Bruce et al. (2025), which explores UK university stakeholders’ perceptions of English language profici
doi.org
January 9, 2026 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
philabcoulter.bsky.social
Best TikTok thing going is the two dudes trying food from every country without leaving NYC. If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s incredible. My favorite so far is last week’s. Legit got me emotional.
January 9, 2026 at 1:50 AM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
Dude, same.
jamellebouie.net jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 11d
my second grader is *obsessed* with everything dave pikey does. our house is overflowing with captain underpants and dog man and all the spin-offs www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/b...
The Man Behind ‘Dog Man’ Is a Pack Leader for Young Readers
www.nytimes.com
January 9, 2026 at 3:19 AM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
jamellebouie.net
a few thoughts youtu.be/lERS4kJIQR8
Abolish ICE
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
youtu.be
January 8, 2026 at 1:42 AM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) has recently been aligned with CEFR and will begin adding CEFR levels to score reports soon. It looks like JLPT N2 caps out at B2, while high enough scores on N1 can reach C1.

I like that the levels correspond to "Linguistic, Receptive".

#langsky
国際交流基金 - 日本語教育ニュース 日本語能力試験（JLPT）の結果にCEFRレベルの参考表示を追加します！
www.jpf.go.jp
January 7, 2026 at 6:24 PM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
conradhackett.bsky.social
Please share - @pewresearch.org wants to hire a data archivist who will be an advocate for data users, helping to ensure that our datasets are easy to discover and reuse by researchers, journalists, and the public.
pewtrusts.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/CenterExtern...
Pew Research Center is seeking a Data Archivist to support our commitment to open science and data transparency. This newly created role will play a key part in enhancing the accessibility, usability, and reproducibility of our research data while continuing to protect the privacy and identity of our survey participants. As Data Archivist, you will lead efforts to create and implement best practices for preparing, documenting, and disseminating datasets. These best practices should maximize FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles while minimizing disclosure risk. You will work across teams to ensure our data is well-organized and thoroughly documented. You will serve as an internal advocate for data users, helping to ensure that our datasets are not only accurate and comprehensive but also easy to discover and reuse by researchers, journalists, and the public. This is a full-time, Pew Research Center position. The position is funded by an external grant and limited to a two-year term. Primary Responsibilities Develop optimization procedures to improve discoverability of our datasets on internal and external platforms Develop and maintain standards to improve accessibility of our microdata and tab plans by changing/adding formats and/or adding documentation Identify metadata documentation best practices and a process to implement those best practices at the Center Work with Legal to evaluate most appropriate license to publicly share the Center's survey data, including Creative Common options Identify and correct processing inefficiencies in our data publication process Sit on the internal Disclosure Risk Taskforce Document analytical decisions and code to support transparency and replicability, including the development of a RACI chart for publishing code to recreate derived variables that are used in reports but are not included in the microdata Manage/create merged time series datasets for select Center datasets Identify a process for internally archiving data and projects that are no longer in active use Identify and implement a process to assign Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to microdata Prepare and upload public-facing datasets and restricted-use datasets for external sharing. Train staff on FAIR principles and best practices in data archiving. Education/Training/Experience Bachelor’s degree required, preferably in library sciences, organizational management, or a related field. 5-7 years of experience with data archiving, database management, or survey research. This may include graduate training at the MA/PhD level or equivalent experience in an applied setting. At least 3-5 years of experience applying FAIR and open science principles. Background in social science research or data curation. Experience in data management, archiving, or research support. Familiarity with FAIR principles, Creative Common licensing, data privacy principles, and exposure risk. Proficiency in metadata standards and documentation tools. Experience managing research projects, including working collaboratively with a multidisciplinary team. Experience with statistical software (e.g., R, Python, Stata) and reproducible research workflows. Knowledge, Skill and Workplace Requirements Strong organizational and communication skills. Detail oriented with exacting standards to maintain accuracy and impartiality in all work products. Ability to work independently to carry out special projects from start to finish. Ability to balance numerous tasks simultaneously. Ability to work collaboratively and collegially with other team members, as well as with staff from other Pew Research Center teams. Ability to balance competing priorities and identify optimal solutions FLSA Status: Exempt Compensation: Starting salary is commensurate with experience within the range of $100,000 - $120,000. Hybrid Work Schedule: Pew Research Center staff are required to be present in the Center’s Washington, D.C., office three core days weekly (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday). Staff may work virtually from remote locations on other days in a typical work week.
January 6, 2026 at 6:27 PM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
Andrew Cohen has published an... interesting commentary in Language Teaching about the state of applied linguistics research, touching on publication and hiring practices. A couple bits I can agree with, but much that I don't.

#langsky
What’s gone wrong with applied linguistic research? | Language Teaching | Cambridge Core
What’s gone wrong with applied linguistic research?
doi.org
January 6, 2026 at 7:09 PM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
Nice to be featured in Grixoni et al.'s recap of SLRF 2025 in Language Teaching:

doi.org/10.1017/S026...
This breadth of topics was well represented by both senior scholars as well as early career researchers and graduate students in the field, often through collaborative work. HeeJoon Choi, Yingliang Liu, and YouJin Kim, for example, compared the effects of digital multimodal composing (DMC) and traditional monomodal writing on vocabulary learning and reading comprehension in integrated reading-to-write tasks among Chinese EFL learners. The study found that writing modality influenced both vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension, suggesting potential advantages of DMC for integrated literacy development and informing pedagogical approaches to multimodal integration in L2 instruction. Yoonseo Kim and Daniel Isbell likewise exemplify the junior + senior scholar collaborations found at SLRF. Their talk presented an item-level method for scoring graph-description tasks with large language models. Comparing several state-of-the-art LLMs to human raters, they found solid alignment – especially on elementary items – and clear differences in rater severity across models. Overall, the approach shows promise for augmenting human scoring by capturing graph-specific content and delivering targeted, item-level feedback.
January 5, 2026 at 8:09 PM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
Starting off the new year by finishing a draft of a grant proposal narrative (yaaay!) and now having to reduce the length by about 1 page (booo!)
January 2, 2026 at 12:41 AM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
glossa-linguistics.bsky.social
It is unclear to me how much traction Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is getting on BlueSky. I am thinking of switching communication about new papers to LinkedIn, which gives better insight into the # of views garnered. Give us a like if you want Glossa to stay on the Blue side of things.
December 29, 2025 at 7:34 PM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
This thread on a large Japanese language migration from Twitter to Bsky is super interesting. I was under the impression that Japan was a Twitter holdout, largely unconcerned with Elon's role in US (and other places') politics. (And on a side note, Korea never seemed big on Twitter but..
alexip718.com Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 25d
See that cluster on the top left? It's gonna get a whole lot bigger by the end of the week.
hailey.at hailey @hailey.at · 28d
a zoomed out view looking at language. might need to pull out all the language specific posts and do individual clustering by language
December 25, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
michaelgoodine.bsky.social
The official FAQ for the IELTS scoring screwup has been updated. We now know exactly how many tests were affected.

www.ieltsresultsupport.org/hc/en-gb/art...
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened?IELTS identified a technical issue that led to a small proportion of test takers – less than 1% – receiving incorrect results between 24 August 2023 and 4 September 2025. The issue ha...
www.ieltsresultsupport.org
December 19, 2025 at 2:16 PM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
This context of Wright's whinging is absolutely critical. Imagine your job prospects getting screwed over by your advisor/PI, who happened to be a white male in a tenure track job, and then turning around and blaming things on unnamed, totally-not-fabricated minorities taking all the jobs.
iramjohn.bsky.social Ian Ramjohn @iramjohn.bsky.social · Dec 19
Wright's claims are particularly absurd. No one was getting jobs in ecology & evolutionary biology in 2020 straight out of grad school with no pubs.

Granted, Wright had a raw deal - most of his pubs were retracted, not because anything he did but because his collaborator was falsifying data
December 19, 2025 at 6:26 AM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
scientificdiscovery.dev
Big new blogpost!

My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more.

--> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...
screenshot of my post
December 9, 2025 at 8:28 PM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
The head of the Korean agency that develops the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT or 수능), a national college entrance exam, resigned due to the recent English language section being too difficult.

www.koreaherald.com/article/1063...
Suneung agency chief resigns over too-difficult English exam
The chief official in charge of the administration of the country's annual national college entrance exam stepped down Wednesday to take responsibility for the
www.koreaherald.com
December 10, 2025 at 6:31 AM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
Being forced to upgrade to Windows 11 because the free MS Office for educators program expired and the copy of Office 24 doesn't work with Win10...

Not going to be a very productive close to this week!
December 5, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
jessgrieser.com
Taking to my vet just now I realized vets : pets :: linguists : languages.

Vets often have lots of pets because they like pets and that’s why they became vets. But having a bunch of pets isn’t what makes you a vet.
December 4, 2025 at 3:31 PM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
So Purdue allegedly has an unofficial ban on admitting grad students from countries designated as adversaries by the Trump admin.
Purdue effectively bans grad students from China, other countries, faculty say
Administrators have apparently urged departments to turn away certain international students.
www.jconline.com
December 4, 2025 at 6:44 AM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
Keep this in mind the next time your uni administration talks about tightening the belt to meet budget challenges. Many universities are losing tens of millions on athletics - shortfalls that lead to stoppages, closures, and layoffs in academic units.
November 30, 2025 at 10:18 PM
danielrisbell.bsky.social
Co‐Authorship in Applied Linguistics Research: Patterns and Trends, 1991–2023 - Pearson - International Journal of Applied Linguistics - Wiley Online Library doi.org/10.1111/ijal...

We are an increasingly collaborative discipline!
Co‐Authorship in Applied Linguistics Research: Patterns and Trends, 1991–2023
It has been 18 years since Greene's featured article in Nature, The demise of the lone author. In that time, there have been enormous shifts in how educational research has been conducted, with a mov...
doi.org
November 30, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
ddlangproject.bsky.social
Susie Kim and @danielrisbell.bsky.social's chapter explores the implementation of #Korean #Pronunciation #Diagnostic (KPD) in an #intermediate-level Korean language course. The chapter also discusses future use of the KPD, including incorporating DA as a part of it doi.org/10.1515/9783...
3 Diagnostic assessment of pronunciation in a Korean language classroom: An action research study
3 Diagnostic assessment of pronunciation in a Korean language classroom: An action research study was published in Dynamic and Diagnostic Language Assessment on page 53.
doi.org
November 27, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Dan Isbell
geraldroche.bsky.social
“These results show that current AI systems are not yet capable of supporting low-resource languages.”
www.hawaii.edu/news/2025/09...
Endangered languages AI tools developed by UH researchers | University of Hawaiʻi System News
UH researchers created the first AI benchmark for endangered Austronesian languages, paving the way for more inclusive language technology.
www.hawaii.edu
November 27, 2025 at 4:19 AM