Great opportunities for language testing practitioners are enabled through language program administration. Local language tests lend themselves to multiple purposes--for placement and diagnosis, as a means of tracking progress, and as a contribution to program evaluation and revision. Administrative choices, especially those involving a test, are…

In the assessment of speaking, a psycholinguistically based speaking construct has predominated. In this paper, we argue for the integration of the construct of interactional competence (IC) in speaking assessments to broaden the range of defensible inferences from speaking tests. IC emphasizes the co-constructed nature of interaction and enables…

Recent investigations into language assessment literacy (LAL) suggest that stakeholder groups might differ in interests, needs, and expectations in assessment practice, resulting in different LAL profiles. This qualitative study furthers this line of research by examining the effect of contextual and experiential factors on the LAL profiles and…

This study examines the methodology of global foreign accent ratings in studies on L2 speech production. In three experiments, we test how variation in raters, range within speech samples, as well as instructions and procedures affects ratings of accent in predominantly monolingual speakers of German, non-native speakers of German, as well as…

This study identifies a unique context for exploring lay understandings of language testing and, by extension, for characterizing the nature of language assessment literacy among non-practitioners, stemming from data in an inquiry into the registration processes and support for overseas trained doctors by the Australian House of Representatives…

The competencies required for conducting assessment in the educational context have recently been reformulated in view of social constructivist perspectives and the acknowledgement of the role of classroom assessment in promoting learning. These changes have impacted the knowledge base language assessors need to obtain, and hence the contents of…

In this speech, the author covers a lot of ground. In the first half of his speech, the author gives a brief summary of the last 40 years of the history of language testing, from his perspective. The author reviews these years more or less by decade. Additionally, he discusses the evolution of the profession of language testing during this period,…

Speech act theory-based, second language pragmatics testing (SLPT) poses problems for validation due to a lack of correspondence with empirical conversational data. Since conversation analysis (CA) provides a richer and more accurate account of language behavior, it may be preferred as a basis for SLPT development. However, applying CA methodology…

This study addressed the question of the consistency of rater characteristics over time, and investigated the potential of multifaceted Rasch measurement in exploring this question. The purpose of the research is to investigate the use of these analytical techniques in rater training for the speaking subtest of the Occupational English Test, an…

This article explores the effect of raters' background on assessments made in an occupation-specific oral language test, the Japanese Language Test for Tour Guides. Assessments of 51 test candidates made by 33 assessors were compared in order to determine what effect background has on assessments made on both linguistic and "real-world"…

Discusses the development of a foreign language (Spanish) test battery that was designed for two purposes: to place students in study-abroad programs appropriate to their language ability and to provide information on designing useful instruction for prospective study-abroad students. Results are presented into task and rater variability in the…

The purpose of this study was to derive the criteria/dimensions underlying learners' second-language oral ability scores across three tests: an oral interview, a narration, and a read-aloud. A stimulus tape of 18 speech samples was presented to 3 native speaker rater groups for evaluation. Results indicate that researchers might need to reconsider…