A comparative study of non-native speaker performance on culture-fair and biased topic prompts

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of cultural bias in essay topics on non-native speaker (NNS) undergraduate writing performance. To do this, this study uses the essay subsection of Florida's College Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST). Motivation for this study came from: (a) a call for research in this area; (b) evidence that racial/ethnic minority groups perform inconsistently on the CLAST essay exam, while White Non-Hispanics demonstrate consistent pass rates across administrations; and (c) evaluations of prior CLAST essay topics that show that some CLAST topics are culturally biased.