Dr. Tugba Elif Toprak-Yildiz
Dr. Tugba Elif Toprak-Yildiz is an assistant professor at Izmir Democracy University (Turkey), Department of English Language and Literature who conducts her post-doctoral research at the University of Bremen under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Claudia Harsch. Elif’s PhD work focused on language testing and assessment and involved diagnosing individuals’ L2 reading ability by posing an inductive approach to cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) and generating diagnostic assessments based on a cognitive model of L2 reading. Her most current work also concentrates on diagnostic language assessment, which involves the implementation of cognitive diagnostic psychometric modelling to language assessment data. To date, she has published a number of research articles in international journals including Language Testing and Studies in Educational Evaluation and presented her work at international conferences such as AERA (American Educational Research Association) and BAAL (British Association for Applied Linguistics). Previously, as a post-doctoral researcher, she conducted studies on language assessment at the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in Hamburg (Germany). Elif’s current post-doctoral project aims to diagnose language learners’ L2 English academic reading ability in the context of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and CDA. She is also a participant in Language Assessment @ Bremen (L@B) research group’s colloquia, which focus on applied projects and research in language testing and assessment.