The proceedings of the first Language Testing Forum in 1980 were published in "ELT Documents 111: Issues in Language Testing" (Alderson & Hughes, 1981). Discussants at the 1980 Forum raised a number questions on Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) testing relating, notably, to test specificity, test content, the relationship between…

Looking back to the language testing world of the 1980s in the United Kingdom, we need to be aware that how we perceive or remember ourselves to have been then--whether as individual language testing academics or as corporate language testing organisations--will be shaped by multiple influences. Although we may have been present at and shared in…

This article presents a case study incorporating English teachers' perspectives into the development of a large-scale international English assessment, the recently developed "TOEFL Junior"® Comprehensive test. It discusses how stakeholder feedback gathered during test development supports the validity argument for score…

The growing number of students from increasingly diverse backgrounds--both English speaking and non-English speaking--entering English-medium institutions of higher education has put unprecedented pressure on universities to think creatively about efficient and cost-effective ways of identifying students at risk linguistically. Having done so,…

This study explores the construct of a summarization test task by means of single-group and multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM). It examines the interrelationships between strategy use and performance, drawing on data from 298 Taiwanese undergraduates' summary essays and their self-reported strategy use. Single-group SEM analyses…

Training of pre- and in-service teachers constitutes one of the most important aspects in the quality assurance of language testing and assessment (LTA). For instance, foreign language (FL) teachers have to deal with standardised tests as well as their own classroom-based assessment procedures. This means they need the necessary expertise that can…

The current focus across the U.S. on student college and career readiness standards makes clear that both instruction and assessment of academic English will continue to be important for school-age English learner (EL) students. This article presents an overview and summary of key literature on academic language (usually academic English);…

The purpose of this article is to examine the literature on teaching statistics for useful ideas that teachers of language testing courses can draw on and incorporate into their teaching toolkits as they see fit. To those ends, the article addresses eight questions: What is known generally about teaching statistics? Why are students so anxious…

The use of video technology has become widespread in the teaching and testing of second-language (L2) listening, yet research into how this technology affects the learning and testing process has lagged. The current study investigated how the channel of input (audiovisual vs. audio-only) used on an L2 listening test affected test-taker…

The use of tests has been targeted as a critical point in validity, which suggests that contexts for test use warrant closer investigation. This article describes a study of decision making during test use in the context of a university intensive English language program. Over a period of 2 1/2 years, data were collected by audio-recording…

This study investigates aspects of validity of an alternative measure of productive vocabulary. Lex30, developed by Meara and Fitzpatrick, is a word association task that claims to give an indication of productive vocabulary knowledge. Previous studies of Lex30 have assessed test-retest reliability, performance against native speaker norms,…

This study investigated the English writing skills developed by 42 children participating in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program for approximately 315 hr, spread over 18 months. The English writing abilities were measured 3 times in terms of grammar, content, coherence, spelling, and text length. A repeated measures multivariate…

Many children around the globe are learning English as a foreign language, especially in Asia. Numbers of participants and development of programs are increasing rapidly, as is a commercial testing movement targeted toward assessing this group of young learners. For example, the popular Cambridge Young Learners English test series has had more…

Opinions differ on the importance of the native speaker's concept for language teaching and testing. This Commentary maintains that it is important and seeks to explain why. Three types of grammar are distinguished, the individual's, the community's and the human faculty of language. For first language teaching and testing it is the community's…

Lyle F. Bachman is Professor, Department of Applied Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles. He is a past president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and of the International Language Testing Association. He has published numerous articles and books in the areas of language testing, program evaluation, and second…