As a significant breakthrough in educational measurement, cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) has made up for the shortcomings of traditional assessment practice by providing fine-grained information about students’ latent knowledge structures beyond single scores. Along with the surging demand for diagnostic feedback in large-scale language tests, an increasing number of CDA studies have emerged primarily for the purpose of facilitating language teaching and learning. In this paper, we conducted a thematic review of 35 empirical studies on cognitive diagnosis in language assessment during the years 2009–2021. In our review, we analyzed three major research topics in this field, namely, application of CDA, optimization of CDA, and CDA for practical and theoretical uses. Along with our analysis, several potential lacunae were discussed, based on which some future directions were provided.
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