The following interview was conducted with Catherine Elder in spring of 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. Cathie has had a varied career in language testing, including work at universities in Australia and New Zealand and at the Language Testing Resource Center in Melbourne. In this interview, Cathie shares some highlights of her somewhat…

This article reviews assessment practices of Japanese as a second language as taught in Japan since the 1980s. It begins with an explanation of the social and political conditions that have impacted assessment practices in Japan and then addresses current assessment practices and issues. This analysis first examines large-scale tests developed in…

This article presents a number of issues on the topic of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) testing that were raised during a plenary discussion at the 30th annual Language Testing Forum. The comments particularly focused on (a) past and current conceptualizations and categorizations of LSP tests, (b) tensions between specificity and…

In 1980 the first meeting of the UK-based Language Testing Forum was held in Lancaster. In 2010, 30 years later, the annual meeting celebrated that first meeting, basing the discussions, as in 1980, on three seminal papers: on the structure of language ability, on communicative language testing, and on testing Languages for Specific Purposes.…

This article explores a number of key issues that emerged during the panel discussion that followed the General Language Proficiency Symposium at the Language Testing Forum (LTF) 2010, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the LTF. The key issues that emerged during the discussion should be of interest to a wider audience, as they express current…