Annual Review of Applied Linguistics

Table of Contents - Volume 19 - 1999  


RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN LANGUAGE TESTING

Antony John  Kunnan a1
a1 California State University, Los Angeles

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).

(Published Online August 8 2003)