---

Entrusted by the Board of Management of the Pacific Rim Objective Measurement Symposium (PROMS), PROMS2012 is held in Jiaxing, China from August 6-9, 2012. Over the past years, PROMS has been hosted in many parts of the Pacific Rim, in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tokyo, which has greatly promoted the research of and contributed to the development of Rasch Model in one way or another. As early as in 1980s, the ideas and concepts regarding IRT was first introduced into China by Prof. Gui Shichun, my Ph.D supervisor, and it is Prof. Gui who first conducted with great success the ten-year long (1990-1999) Equating Project for Matriculation English Test (MET) in China. MET is the most influential entrance examination for higher education administered annually to over 3.3 million candidates then. The Equating Project won recognition by Charles Alderson and other foreign counterparts during 1990s. Academically, those were Good Old Days for Chinese testing experts and psychometricians. Then for certain reasons, the equating practice abruptly discontinued. Therefore, in China nowadays, the application of IRT-based software like BILOG, Parscale, Iteman 4 and others to real testing problem solving is confined to an extremely small ´band´ of people. In this sense, PROMS2012 meets an important need in that it provides an excellent introduction of IRT and its application. And anyone who is seriously interested in research and development in the field of psychometrics or language testing will find such a symposium and related workshops to be an excellent source of information about the application of Rasch Model. PROMS2012 focuses on recent advances in objective measurement and provides an international forum on both the latest research in using Rasch measurement and non-Rasch practice.

---

Acknowledgements.- Poster of PROMS2012.- A Welcome Message from PROMS Chairman.- A Welcome Message from Xu Xianmin, President of Jiaxing University.- A Welcome Message from Zhang Quan, Dean of Faculty of Foreign Studies, Jiaxing University Conference Organizer.- Sponsors.- Papers.- 1. On the Potential for Improved Measurement in the Human and Social Sciences William P. Fisher, Jr. and A. Jackson Stenner.- 2. A Pilot Study Based on Rasch into the Appropriateness of the TOEIC Bridge Test for Chinese Students: Status Quo and Prospect Zhang Quan, Miao Mingzhu, Zhu Chunyan and Eng Han Tan.- 3. Validating the Model of Predictors of Academic Self-handicapping Behavior Hafsa Mzee Mwita _Mohamad Sahari Nordin and Mohd Burhan Ibrahim.- 4. Implementing Formative Assessment in the Translation Course for English Majors LV Siqi.- 5. Further Implementation of User Defined Fit Statistics Daniel Urbach.- 6. Investigating the Consequences of the Application of Formative Evaluation to Reading-Writing Model Yang Hong, Zhou Hong and Zhao Yan.- 7. Learning by Assessing in an EFL Writing Class Trevor A. Holster _William R. Pellowe, J. Lake1, and Aaron Hahn.- 8. Construction and Evaluation of an Item Bank for an Introductory Statistics Class: A Pilot Study Sieh-Hwa Lin, Pei-Jung Hsieh and Li-Chuan Wu.- 9. The Impact of Unobserved Extreme Categories on Item and Person Estimates ---- A Simulation Study.- Edward Feng Li.- 10. Assessment Report on Reading Literacy in Guangxi Ethnic Minority Region ---- Based on PIRLS 2006 Test Analysis Yu Jing and Luo Dehong.- 11. Extended Mantel-Haenszel Procedure for DIF Detection - A Note on Its Implementation in ACER ConQuest Xiaoxun Sun.- 12. A Research on the Effectiveness of DynEd Computer-assisted English Language Learning -----Taking Ningbo Polytechnic as an Example Huang Jingru and Wu Baixang.- 13. Foreign Language Aptitude Components and Different Levels of Foreign Language Proficiency Among Chinese English Majors Li Lanrong.- 14. Motivation and Arabic Learning Achievement: A Comparative Study between Two Types of Gansu Islamic Schools in China Qiao Juping, Noor Lide Abu Kassim, & Kamal Badrasawi.- 15. Rasch-Based Analysis of Item and Person Fit ---- A language testing practice in Jiaxing University China He Guoxiong and Mu Huifeng.- 16. The contribution of lower-level processing to foreign language reading comprehension with Chinese EFL learners Han Feifei.- 17. Comparing Students´ Citizenship Concepts with Likert-scale Kui Foon Chow.- Abstracts.

---