18 - Issues in EAP test development: What one institution and its history tell us

Summary

Introduction: contexts and mandates in EAP testing

The testing of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is a special case of a more general phenomenon in education: assessments which answer educational mandates within given instructional contexts. A mandate is the justification for a test, and the context is the environment or setting in which a test operates. There may be (and often are) many test mandates within a given context. In a typical EAP test setting, the context is usually an institution of tertiary education at which there are a number of students for whom the institution's lingua franca is a foreign language. This triggers a number of reactions by the institution, including (typically) an array of EAP instructional courses and some sort of EAP assessment. If more than one EAP test evolves, it is likely that each addresses a different mandate. Our home institution is a case-in-point. We have three mandates for EAP assessment: assessment of written mode ability of newly-matriculated non-English speaking students (which is the focus of this paper), the assessment of speaking of the same newly-matriculated students, and additional oral testing of non-English speaking students who will serve as instructors at the university during their post-graduate career. All three mandates function within the context of our campus: each is shaped by the unique mix of political, social, curricular and logistical constraints at our university.