This edited book brings together fifteen original empirical studies from a variety of international contexts to provide a detailed exploration of language assessment, testing and evaluation. Language assessment has a key role in the development and implementation of language and educational policies at the national level, and this book examines some of the impacts - both positive and negative - of different skills testing and examination approaches on learning outcomes and individual students' language learning. This book will be of interest to scholars working in applied linguistics and language education, teacher training, testing and evaluation, as well as stakeholders such as practitioners, educators, educational agencies, and test developers.
This volume outlines the general principles of Learning Oriented Assessment (LOA), placing it in the context of European language learning policy. The authors pose three key questions central to LOA: 'What is learning?' , 'What is to be learned?' and 'What is to be assessed?'. It focuses on the use of evidence, and how it can be collected and used to feed back into learning, overviews large-scale assessment as practised by Cambridge English and learning-oriented classroom assessment practices, and concludes with a look at implementing LOA in practice. With fresh insights into the role of assessment in supporting learning, this volume will be of considerable interest to assessment practitioners, teachers and academics, educational policy-makers and examination board personnel.
This paper presents a study of how teenage boys with learning disabilities evaluate co-participants' 'cognitive' or 'mental' state competences in interaction ("you are sick in the head"). The evaluations emerge out of disputes and disagreements about social experiences and end these disputes by excluding the co-participant from further talk on current topics. The study shows thus how 'mental' state evaluations become insults: In and through the use of 'mental' state evaluations in actions in which the boys triumph over, or 'win' the dispute as they exclude others from participation in on-going.
Drawing on data from a range of contexts, including classrooms, pharmacy consultations, tutoring sessions, and video-game playing, and a range of languages including English, German, French, Danish and Icelandic, the studies in this volume address challenges suggested by these questions: What kinds of interactional resources do L2 users draw on to participate competently and creatively in their L2 encounters? And how useful is conversation analysis in capturing the specific development of individuals’ interactional competencies in specific practices across time? Rather than treating participants in L2 interactions as deficient speakers, the book begins with the assumption that those who interact using a second language possess interactional competencies. The studies set out to identify what these competencies are and how they change across time. By doing so, they address some of the difficult and yet unresolved issues that arise when it comes to comparing actions or practices across different moments in time.
This book takes a critical perspective of research on assessing speaking in second and foreign languages. Chapters focus on the complexity brought about by actual interactional competence in speaking tasks and discuss how testing and assessment models and practices can incorporate recent research on the dynamic and situated nature of language use.
This volume features the latest research findings on L2 interactional competence to demonstrate the potential for developing and implementing research-based pedagogy that targets interactional competence (IC) in early instruction in a variety of L2 learning and teaching contexts. Incorporating contributions from both leading and emerging researchers in the area, the book is organized into four sections to provide a systematic account of interactional competence, defined as a set of skills required to co-construct an effective interaction with a variety of interlocutors in a variety of settings, and advocates for IC to be part of a well-rounded curriculum of L2 instruction. The volume provides a comprehensive overview of the different theoretical perspectives on IC within Conversation Analysis, and moves into a discussion of conversation-analytic research findings from a variety of contexts and of their pedagogical implications.The book then presents examples of pedagogy in practice and also illustrates the potential for implementing IC in testing settings. This volume makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on interactional competence and will be of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in applied linguistics, SLA, language education, curriculum and instruction studies, and educational linguistics. Chapter 13 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Second language assessment is ubiquitous. It has found its way from education into questions about access to professions and migration. This volume focuses on the main debates and research advances in second language assessment in the last fifty years or so, showing the influence of linguistics, politics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and psychometrics. There are four parts which, when taken together, address the principles and practices of second language assessment while considering its impact on society. Read separately, each part addresses a different aspect of the field. Part I deals with the conceptual foundations of second language assessment with chapters on the purposes of assessment, and standards and frameworks, as well as matters of scoring, quality assurance, and test validation. Part II addresses the theory and practice of assessing different second language skills including aspects like intercultural competence and fluency. Part III examines the challenges and opportunities of second language assessment in a range of contexts. In addition to chapters on second language assessment on a national scale, there are chapters on learning-oriented assessment, as well as the uses of second language assessment in the workplace and for migration. Part IV examines a selection of important issues in the field that deserve attention. These include the alignment of language examinations to external frameworks, the increasing use of technology to both deliver and score second language tests, the responsibilities associated with assessing test takers with special needs, the concept of 'voice' in second language assessment, and assessment literacy for teachers and other test and score users.
This Handbook, with 45 chapters written by the world’s leading scholars in second language acquisition (SLA) and language testing, dives into the important interface between SLA and language testing: shared ground where researchers seek to measure second language performance to better understand how people learn their second languages. The Handbook also reviews how to best measure and evaluate the second language (L2) learners’ personal characteristics, backgrounds, and learning contexts to better understand their L2 learning trajectories. Taking a transdisciplinary approach to research, the book builds upon recent theorizing and measurement principles from the fields of applied linguistics, cognitive science, psychology, psycholinguistics, psychometrics, educational measurement, and social psychology. The Handbook is divided into six key sections: (1) Assessment concepts for SLA researchers, (2) Building instruments for SLA research, (3) Measuring individual differences, (4) Measuring language development, (5) Testing specific populations, and (6) Measurement principles for SLA researchers.
This publication contains a selection of research papers presented at the 15th Annual Language Testing Research Colloquium.This publication contains a selection of research papers presented at the 15th Annual Language Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC). The Colloquium was jointly hosted by the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) in Cambridge and CITO in Arnhem in the Netherlands. At the Cambridge venue, the papers were presented on the theme of performance testing and at Arnhem, they covered aspects of communication in relation to cognition and assessment. A selection of papers has been made in order to achieve a balanced coverage of these themes. In particular, the research presented includes work on speaking and writing tests where the focus is on raters and tasks; the application of various statistical methods in language test validation; and issues related to language testing in specific contexts and with particular candidate groups.
This book provides interdisciplinary perspectives on task-based language teaching (TBLT) and task-based language assessment (TBLA) in English as a second language (ESL) context. It discusses theoretical and experimental insights of TBLT and TBLA from cognitive, cognitive linguistic, and psycholinguistic viewpoints. The chapters, written by leading language teaching specialists in the field, introduce the reader to a comprehensive range of issues related to TBLT and TBLA such as curriculum design, materials development, and classroom teaching & testing. With interdisciplinary appeal, the book is a valuable resource for researchers in task-based language teaching and assessment. It is equally useful for teachers to whom it offers practical suggestions for designing tasks for teaching and testing.
