Focus on assessment

Teacher trainers and testing specialists alike have tended to see teaching and testing as separate worlds, each associated with a distinct research tradition. However, the past few years have seen a shift in thinking, reflected in the increasing use of the term ‘assessment’ rather than ‘testing’ in professional development books for teachers. Departing from the well-trodden path of investigating the technical qualities of formal tests, language assessment researchers have begun venturing into language classrooms. They have looked at the competing demands on teachers from their diverse assessment responsibilities, including the tensions between supporting students to succeed and accounting dispassionately for what they have learnt. Researchers have explored practical ways in which teachers use assessment to gain insights into questions such as what students know, what they are able to do with language, what motivates them and how best to help them to make progress. The Oxford Key Concepts for the Language Classroom series, as Lightbown and Spada explain in their Series Editors’ Preface, is intended to make clear connections between research and practice, filling a gap between methodology books on one hand (advice on methods without links to research) and academic books on the other (which prioritize research rigour over practical implications). With this timely volume, Eunice Jang, an accomplished researcher in this field, offers to help teachers to understand the emerging evidence on classroom assessment and to use it as an incentive to think critically about their own practices. The book will certainly inform readers about recent research and help them to evaluate language assessment practices, although teachers hoping for off-the-shelf resources to put directly into practice in the classroom will not find them here.