Practical Language Testing

by Glenn Fulcher

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 analyze 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 fulfills 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 programs.

Genres: Linguistics

364 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books on language testing I've read. It explains the use of language tests in society, and approaches it from both historical and philosophical perspectives, placing practices in the context of the history of thought. The critical insights are very challenging. The book achieves more than this though. It explains how language tests are designed and created. It also has really good practical activities to help teachers and applied linguistics students practice the skills they'll need to develop useful tests and assessments. Lots of teachers are afraid of the numbers that language testers use. This book kind of demystifies all of that. One of the things I liked was that the author has a website that supports reading and learning with this text. It seems to be updated on a daily basis! Some achievement. It's worth visiting: http://languagetesting.info