In recent years, continuing advances in technology have increased the capacity to automate the extraction of a range of linguistic features of texts and thus have provided the impetus for the substantial growth of corpus linguistics. While corpus linguistic tools and methods have been used extensively in second language learning research, they…

Language-in-education research can contribute to transformative progress toward educational equity and excellence. Although this assertion is likely uncontroversial within the field of language in education, agreeing on which types of research lead to which transformative progress is much less straightforward. The thought-provoking commentaries on…

This interview with James E. Purpura via Zoom comes in uncertain times, with CVOID-19 turning into a global pandemic. The author delves into different issues related to James E. Purpura's early career and his Language Assessment Quarterly (LAQ) editorial experience. Then moves on and talk about his research and teaching. The final part will…

Antony John Kunnan is a language assessment specialist. His research interests are fairness of tests and testing practice, assessment literacy, research methods and statistics, ethics and standards, and language assessment policy. His most recent publications include a four-volume edited collection of 140 chapters titled "The Companion to…

In the Keynote Article, "The Interface Between Bilingual Development and Specific Language Impairment," Johanne Paradis considers issues and evidence at the intersection of children learning two languages and primary or specific language impairment (SLI). The review focuses on morphosyntactic evidence and the fit of this evidence with maturational…

This article concerns a particular application of Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) wherein conventional assessment situations are reorganized to allow for cooperation between assessor and learner as they jointly complete assessment tasks and work through difficulties that arise. This approach, known as Dynamic…

While formal research into the effect various technologies have on vocabulary acquisition is still in its infancy, it is clear that--intentionally or incidentally--students have used various electronic media to learn new words for some time now. Moreover, although it is still far from clear exactly how one acquires vocabulary in a second language…

Schools struggle to accurately assess nonnative speakers of English using accountability systems that somehow do not capture the complexity of the issues at hand. This article discusses topics surrounding the assessment of English language learners and how these issues have been oversimplified by such processes as the No Child Left Behind…

Several issues make standardized assessment of ELLs a challenge and the information provided by these assessments unreliable. However, as educators, they do need to know how students are doing, what gains they are making, where gaps in their understanding exist, and what types of instructional strategies and topics need to be introduced to…

In this article, the author discusses issues that have seemed most fundamental--yet perplexing because they are not well or widely understood--for the students who usually take his masters-level course called Second-Language Assessment. These master's students are experienced teachers, mostly of English, but also of other languages such as French…

This article presents an interview with Professor Kenji Ohtomo who retired in March 2006 from the post of Dean, College of Applied International Studies, Tokiwa University, Mito, in Japan. Professor Ohtomo is currently a Professor Emeritus at the University of Tsukuba and Honorary President of the Japan Language Testing Association, of which he…

Describes development of the IES Model Assessment Practice (MAP), a set of detailed criteria to use in evaluating IES study abroad programs and discusses how IES is beginning to implement MAP. (Author/VWL)

In choosing language testing alternatives appropriate for their language education contexts, language teachers need to keep in mind the purposeful nature of language assessment. Purposeful language assessment involves focusing what is to be accomplished by language assessment, specifying intended uses of language tests, selecting appropriate…

Finds that teaching textbooks are becoming more complex and difficult, and less interesting. A procedure is suggested for measuring these qualities in a textbook, based on the "Reading Ease" and "Human Interest" indices of R. Flesh, in Volume 6 of his work "The Good Companion". Two samples from texts are appended. (IFS/WGA)

Addresses the following issues as they relate to the concept of standards in education: the content of standards, defining standards, setting standards, and using standards. (Author/VWL)