1st Edition

The Routledge Handbook of Language Testing

Edited By Glenn Fulcher, Fred Davidson Copyright 2012
    550 Pages
    by Routledge

    Winner of the SAGE/ILTA Book Award 2016

    The Routledge Handbook of Language Testing will provide a comprehensive account of the area of language assessment and testing. Written by leading specialists from around the world, this volume brings together approximately 35 authoritative articles (around 8000 words each). The proposed outline for the Handbook (below) is divided into ten sections. The section titles reflect the contents of their Language Testing and Assessment –textbook in our RAL series and sketch a useful overview of the discipline. Each chapter has been carefully selected to relate to key issues raised in the respective topic, providing additional historical background, critical discussion, reviews of key research methods, and an assessment of what the future might hold.

     

    Editorial. Glenn Fulcher and Fred Davidson. Section 1: Validity. 1.Conceptions of Validity. Carol A. Chapelle. 2. Articulating a Validity Argument. Michael Kane. 3. Validity Issues in Designing Accommodations for English LanguageL. Jamal Abedi. Section 2: Classroom Assessment and Washback. 4. Classroom Assessment. Carolyn Turner.5.Washback. Dianne Wall. 6: Assessing Young Learners. Angela Hasselgreen. 7.Dynamic Assessment. Marta Anton. 8. Diagnostic Assessment in Language Classrooms. Eunice Jang. Section 3: The Social Uses of Language Testing. 9. Designing Language Tests for Specific Social Uses. Carol Moder and Gene Halleck. 10. Language Assessment for Communication Disorders. John Oller. 11.Language Testing for Immigration, Citizenship and Asylum. Antony Kunnan. 12. Social Dimensions of Language Testing. Richard Young. Section 4: Test Specifications. 13. Test Specifications and Criterion Referenced Assessment. Fred Davidson. 14.Evidence-centred Design in Language Testing. Robert Mislevyand Chengbin Yin. 15. Claims, Evidence and Inference in Performance Assessment. Steve Ross. Section 5: Writing Items and Tasks. 16. Item Writing and Writers. Dong-Il Shin. 17. Writing Integrated items. Lia Plakans. 18. Test Taking Strategies and Task Design. Andrew Cohen. Section 6: Prototyping and Field Tests. 19. Prototyping New Item Types. Susan Nissan and Mary Schedl. 20. Pre-operational Testing. Dorry Kenyon and David MacGregor. 21.Piloting Vocabulary Tests. John Read. Section 7: Measurement Theory and Practice. 22. Classical Test Theory. J. D. Brown. 23. Item Response Theory. Gary Ockey. 24. Reliability and Dependability. Neil Jones. 25. The Generalisability of Scores from Language Tests. Rob Schoonen. 26. Scoring Performance Tests. Glenn Fulcher. Section 8: Administration and Training. 27. Quality Management in Test Production and Administration. Nick Saville. 28. Interlocutor and Rater Training. Annie Brown. 29. Technology in Language Testing. Yasuyo Sawaki. 30. Validity and the Automated Scoring of Performance Tests. Xiaoming Xi. Section 9: Ethics and Language Policy. 31. Ethics. Alan Davies.  32.Fairness. Scott Walters. 33. Standards-Based Testing. Thom Hudson. 34. Language Testing and Language Management. Bernard Spolsky.

    Biography

    Glenn Fulcher is Professor of Education and Language Assessment at the University of Leicester, UK.

    Fred Davidson is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

     

    'This thorough and comprehensive introduction to the practical and theoretical dimensions of language testing and assessment is set to become a standard reference. With chapters by leading international authorities in the field, it is both intellectually stimulating and practically useful, and is a must-read for those involved in language testing as test developers, test users, policy makers and researchers.'

    Tim McNamara, The University of Melbourne, Australia

    'I found this book to be the finest collection of cogent articles on language testing to date. The Handbook solidifies language testing as a discipline in its own right-one that has real-world impacts on society at large. Stimulating and clear, the articles will be a valuable resource for decades to come.'

    Paula Winke, Michigan State University, USA