RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN LANGUAGE TESTING

Abstract

In an earlier review for the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Douglas (1995) wrote, “the year 1990 represented a watershed in language testing” (p. 167). This decade, though by no means over, has taken the field even further in terms of theoretical and practical developments. A few examples should illustrate this point: For test theoreticians and researchers, models of communicative language ability have challenged the traditional skills–and–components models (Bachman 1990, Bachman and Palmer 1996); applications of Messick's (1989) expanded view of validation have balanced arguments previously made solely by measurement experts (Kunnan 1998a); discussions of policy and social considerations (McNamara 1998), fairness (Kunnan 1996; in press), critical language testing (Shohamy 1997a) and ethics and professionalism (Davies 1997a; 1997b) have added new beveled angles for debates; structural equation modeling has successfully asserted its role as useful quantitative methodology (Kunnan 1995; 1998b); and verbal protocol analysis has proved to be a viable qualitative methodology (Green 1997).