The Sociocultural Activity Of High Stakes Standardised Language Testing

This book explores the influence of high stakes standardised testing within the context of South Korea. South Korea is regarded as a shining example of success in educational achievement and, as this book reveals, pressurised standardised testing has been a major contributing factor to its success. This unique country provides an excellent setting from which to explore the powerful relationship that exists between testing and learning and can advance our understanding of which factors and test conditions will positively and negatively influence learning. This book follows the test activity of a group of Korean university students preparing for the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) and posits a revised model of the influence of testing on learning. It calls for a more socially situated view of tests and test-takers considered in relation to the sociocultural, historical, political and economic contexts in which they are embedded.

This second edition of The Routledge Handbook of Language Testing provides an updated and comprehensive account of the area of language testing and assessment. The volume brings together 35 authoritative articles, divided into ten sections, written by 51 leading specialists from around the world. There are five entirely new chapters covering the four skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as a new entry on corpus linguistics and language testing. The remaining 30 chapters have been revised, often extensively, or entirely rewritten with new authorship teams at the helm, reflecting new generations of expertise in the field. With a dedicated section on technology in language testing, reflecting current trends in the field, the Handbook also includes an extended epilogue written by Harding and Fulcher, contemplating what has changed between the first and second editions and charting a trajectory for the field of language testing and assessment. Providing a basis for discussion, project work, and the design of both language tests themselves and related validation research, this Handbook represents an invaluable resource for students, researchers, and practitioners working in language testing and assessment and the wider field of language education.

Highlighting marginalized but significant perspectives about the sociopolitical essence of English language tests and testing processes worldwide, this book explores the social considerations of testing theories and practices from a critical perspective. Investigating concerns surrounding power inequalities, The Sociopolitics of English Language Testing takes a socially-situated view of language assessment, bringing sociopolitical understandings of language teaching, learning, and assessment to the forefront in the field. Within the broader discussion of the politics of test use, an international team of language and education experts address the issues of ideology, diversity, power, and dominance in English language testing. Through socially-sensitive theoretical as well as empirical discussion and investigation of English language testing, this book offers valuable insights, not only to applied linguists and the language education community who have focused on positivistic and cognitively-oriented conceptions of language testing, but to anyone who wishes to venture beyond the traditional bounds of the field.

Practical Language Testing equips you with the skills, knowledge and principles necessary to understand and construct language tests. This intensely practical book gives guidelines on the design of assessments within the classroom, and provides the necessary tools to analyse and improve assessments, as well as deal with alignment to externally imposed standards. Testing is situated both within the classroom and within the larger social context, and readers are provided the knowledge necessary to make realistic and fair decisions about the use and implementation of tests. The book explains the normative role of large scale testing and provides alternatives that the reader can adapt to their own context. This fulfils the dual purpose of providing the reader with the knowledge they need to prepare learners for tests, and the practical skills for using assessment for learning. Practical Language Testing is the ideal introduction for students of applied linguistics, TESOL and modern foreign language teaching as well as practicing teachers required to design or implement language testing programmes. The book is supported by frequently updated online resources at http://languagetesting.info/ including sets of scenarios providing resources to study aviation English assessment, call centre assessment, military language assessment, and medical language assessment. The materials can be used to structure debates and seminars, with pre-reading and video activities. Practical Language Testing was commended as a 2012 runner-up of the prestigious SAGE/ILTA Award for Best Book on Language Testing.

This book advocates that teachers should play an active role in high-stakes language testing and that more weight should be given to teacher judgement. This is likely to increase the formative potential of high-stakes tests and provide teachers with a sense of ownership. The implication is that the knowledge and skills they develop by being involved in these tests will feed into their own classroom practices. The book also considers the arguments against teacher involvement, e.g. the contention that teacher involvement might entrench the practice of teaching to the test, or that teachers should not be actively involved in high-stakes language testing because their judgement is insufficiently reliable. Using contributions from a wide range of international educational contexts, the book proposes that a lack of reliability in teacher judgement is best addressed by means of training and not by barring educators from participating in high-stakes language testing. It also argues that their involvement in testing helps teachers to bolster confidence in their own judgement and develop their assessment literacy. Moreover, teacher involvement empowers them to play a role in reforming high-stakes language testing so that it is more equitable and more likely to enhance classroom practices. High-stakes language tests that adopt such an inclusive approach facilitate more effective learning on the part of teachers, which ultimately benefits all their students.

The sixth volume in the Global Research on Teaching and Learning English series offers up-to-date research on the rapidly changing field of language assessment. The book features original research with chapters reporting on a variety of international education settings from a range of diverse perspectives. Covering a broad range of key topics—including scoring processes, test development, and student and teacher perspectives—contributors offer a comprehensive overview of the landscape of language assessment and discuss the consequences and impact for learners, teachers, learning programs, and society. Focusing on the assessment of language proficiency, this volume provides an original compendium of cutting-edge research that will benefit TESOL and TEFL students, language assessment scholars, and language teachers.

Activity Theory in Education: Research and Practice brings together cutting-edge scholars from a number of continents. Through in-depth case studies the authors highlight how Activity Theory is used in education and discuss the theoretical as well as pragmatic use of Activity Theory frameworks in a range of contemporary learning contexts. The first section of the book focuses on empirical research on using Activity Theory in analysing students’ and teachers’ experiences of learning and teaching in face-to-face and online learning contexts. The second section contains insights in identifying historical and systemic tensions in educational contexts using Activity Theory. The third section discusses conceptual and contextual aspects of educational contexts through Activity Theory, and Section four discusses the application of Activity Theory in understanding teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge and curriculum development. In spite of the widespread and rapidly increasing use of Activity Theory in educational research, few collections of this work are available. Activity Theory in Education: Research and Practice is such a much needed collection of practical experiences, theoretical insights and empirical research findings on the use of Activity Theory in educational settings.” – Yrjö Engeström, Centre for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE), The University of Helsinki.

The tenth volume in the TIRF-Routledge series, this book features research on the teaching and learning of English in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). With chapters written by TIRF Doctoral Dissertation Grant awardees and internationally known scholars, the volume addresses contemporary challenges and considerations to teaching English in the MENA context. With empirical research covering a wide range of under-studied contexts, this book provides important insights and future directions to improve research and instruction. Offering up-to-date research at the primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels, this volume is an essential resource for language education programs and pre-service teachers. Chapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.