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Lyle F. Bachman, UCLA
Title: Language Assessment: Opportunities and challenges
Abstract: The field of language assessment has matured in both the breadth of research questions it addresses and in the range of research methods at its disposal for addressing these questions and issues. We still grapple with the nature of language ability and the difficult questions about how and why language assessments are used, the societal values that underlie such use, the consequences of assessment use and the ethical responsibilities of test developers and users.
However, the greatest challenges that language assessment now faces are in the arenas where language tests are used to make decisions about individuals and institutions, rather than in the cerebral spheres of validity theory, post-modern social theory and moral philosophy. There is a huge demand world-wide for greater involvement of individuals with expertise in language testing in the areas of classroom and accountability assessment. The assessment requirements of No Child Left Behind in the U. S, for example, have placed increased demands for useful assessments. Recent initiatives of the U. S. government to increase our nation’s capacity in foreign languages will also require useful assessments of foreign languages, particularly the less commonly taught languages. Similar demands for the involvement of individuals with expertise in language assessment can be found in countries around the globe.
The immediate and long-term prospects for language asessment are filled with opportunities and challenges. Turning these into accomplishments will depend upon the willingness and capability of language testers to apply the knowledge and skills acquired over the past half century to the urgent practical assessment needs of our education systems and socieies.
Bio-statement: Lyle F. Bachman is Professor and Chair, Department of Applied Linguistics and TESL, 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 was the first winner of the TESOL/Newbury House Award for Outstanding Research, has won the Modern Language Association of America’s Kenneth Mildenberger Award for outstanding research publication twice, and has been given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Language Testing Association. His current research interests include validity theory, issues in assessing the academic achievement and academic English of ELLs in schools, interfaces between language testing research and second language acquisition research, and epistemological issues in Applied Linguistics research. His most recent publication is Statistical Analyses for Language Assessment (Cambridge, 2004).
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