Language teachers the world over inevitably need to engage in assessing their students’ language ability for various purposes – diagnostic, progress, achievement, etc. Because language assessment is a major task for language teachers, language teaching programs should provide pre-service teachers with opportunities to problematize assessment in the foreign or second language classroom. Educating pre-service teachers for assessment should lead to positive consequences on their in-service work. In this book, the author provides a research-based approach to plan, design, implement, and evaluate a language assessment course for pre-service teachers. The following are some of the central issues addressed in the book: • A conceptualization of Language Assessment Literacy (LAL) –the central construct in the book– and its relationship with language teachers’ professional development. • A theoretically and empirically driven approach for planning and designing a language assessment course. • A hands-on approach to teaching language assessment to pre-service language teachers. • Suggestions for teaching the design of assessments for the four language skills. • Suggestions for language teacher educators to discuss and derive ideas for assessment in their language teaching programs. • Real sample items and tasks for teaching and assessing pre-service teachers’ LAL. The author constantly invites teacher educators to reflect upon the theory, research, and practice presented in the book. In doing so, he encourages these stakeholders to plan and teach language assessment courses that foster the LAL of pre-service teachers’, an overlooked stakeholder group in LAL discussions.

The field of language testing and assessment has recognized the importance and underlying theoretical and practical underpinnings of language assessment literacy (LAL), an area that is gradually coming to prominence. This book addresses issues that promote the concept of LAL for language research, teaching, and learning, covering a range of topics. It brings together 14 chapters based on high-stakes and classroom-based studies authored by academics, professionals and researchers in the field. The text examines diverse issues through a multifaceted approach, presenting high-quality contributions that fill a gap in a research area that has long been in need of theoretical and empirical attention.

The language assessment literacy (LAL) of pre-service teachers is garnering interest in language testing and assessment. Preparing these stakeholders to conduct professional assessment practices should be a major goal of language teaching programs in general. In this book, the author offers a methodological framework to educate pre-service teachers through language assessment. The book has these components: • A definition of teachers' language assessment literacy (LAL), the construct underlying the book. • A project-based framework as the overarching instructional approach for pre-service teachers' LAL development. • Strategies to teach various areas of language assessment to pre-service teachers. • Numerous ideas on classroom techniques to foster pre-service teachers' LAL. • Exercises for pre-service teacher educators to problematize and design their context-sensitive LAL initiatives. • A test to diagnose and/or check achievement of pre-service teachers' LAL. • A glossary of language assessment terms used in the book. The author encourages readers to reflect upon the theoretical and methodological aspects covered throughout the book, while acknowledging the potential benefits and challenges of his proposed pedagogy of LAL. Overall, this book may be a contribution to current and future LAL discussions, especially regarding pre-service teachers' LAL development.

This book combines insights from language assessment literacy and critical language testing through critical analyses and research about challenges in language assessment around the world. It investigates problematic practices in language testing which are relevant to language test users such as language program directors, testing centers, and language teachers, as well as teachers-in-training in Graduate Diploma and Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics programs. These issues involve aspects of language testing such as test development, test administration, scoring, and interpretation/use of test results. Chapters in this volume discuss insights about language testing policy, testing world languages, developing program-level language tests and tests of specific language skills, and language assessment literacy. In addition, this book identifies two needs in language testing for further examination: the need for collaboration between language test developers, language test users, and language users, and the need to base language tests on real-world language use.

Perspectives on Language Assessment Literacy describes how the elements of language assessment literacy can help teachers gather information about when and how to assess learners, and about using the appropriate assessment tools to interpret results in a fair way. It provides highlights from past and current research, descriptions of assessment processes that enhance LAL, case studies from classrooms, and suggestions for professional dialogue and collaboration. This book will help to foster continuous learning, empower learners and teachers and make them more confident in their assessment tasks, and reassure decision makers that what is going on in assessment meets international benchmarks and standards. It addresses issues like concepts and challenges of assessment, the impacts of reflective feedback on assessment, the ontogenetic nature of assessment literacy, the reliability of classroom-based assessment, and interfaces between teaching and assessment. It fills this gap in the literature by addressing the current status and future challenges of language assessment literacy. This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of language assessment literacy and English language teaching.

In the field of language testing, there is a growing interest regarding pedagogical approaches to problematize and foster teachers' Language Assessment Literacy (LAL). Although relevant LAL research studies report on the contents and teaching methodologies of assessment courses, few report on their entire design, implemen- tation, and evaluation stages. In Language Assessment Literacy for In-Service Teachers: Online Course Planning and Implementation, the author describes and discusses a systematic approach to plan, teach, and evaluate an online language assessment course for English language teachers in the coffee region of Colombia. In particular, the book explores the following LAL issues: • A discussion of LAL and teachers' professional development, with an emphasis on proposed pedagogies for fostering LAL. • An empirical approach to drawing these teachers' LAL, designing the online course and accompanying materials, implementing the course, and evaluating it. • Ideas for teaching assessment to language teachers and assessing their LAL. in online environments. • Numerous tasks for teacher educators to problematize their own courses for teachers' LAL. • Sample data collection instruments and pedagogical materials to elicit and activate teachers' LAL. Throughout the book, the author constantly invites teacher educators to analyze his proposed approach, while highlighting the challenges and implications inher ent in the enterprise of developing online courses to cultivate teachers' LAL. In conclusion, this book offers conceptual, pedagogical, and research insights into LAL pedagogies involving in-service language teachers

Second language assessment is ubiquitous. It has found its way from education into questions about access to professions and migration. This volume focuses on the main debates and research advances in second language assessment in the last fifty years or so, showing the influence of linguistics, politics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and psychometrics. There are four parts which, when taken together, address the principles and practices of second language assessment while considering its impact on society. Read separately, each part addresses a different aspect of the field. Part I deals with the conceptual foundations of second language assessment with chapters on the purposes of assessment, and standards and frameworks, as well as matters of scoring, quality assurance, and test validation. Part II addresses the theory and practice of assessing different second language skills including aspects like intercultural competence and fluency. Part III examines the challenges and opportunities of second language assessment in a range of contexts. In addition to chapters on second language assessment on a national scale, there are chapters on learning-oriented assessment, as well as the uses of second language assessment in the workplace and for migration. Part IV examines a selection of important issues in the field that deserve attention. These include the alignment of language examinations to external frameworks, the increasing use of technology to both deliver and score second language tests, the responsibilities associated with assessing test takers with special needs, the concept of 'voice' in second language assessment, and assessment literacy for teachers and other test and score users.

The evaluation of student performance and knowledge is a critical element of an educator’s job as well as an essential step in the learning process for students. The quality and effectiveness of the evaluations given by educators are impacted by their ability to create and use reliable and valuable evaluations to facilitate and communicate student learning. The Handbook of Research on Assessment Literacy and Teacher-Made Testing in the Language Classroom is an essential reference source that discusses effective language assessment and educator roles in evaluation design. Featuring research on topics such as course learning outcomes, learning analytics, and teacher collaboration, this book is ideally designed for educators, administrative officials, linguists, academicians, researchers, and education students seeking coverage on an educator’s role in evaluation design and analyses of evaluation methods and outcomes.

The sixth volume in the Global Research on Teaching and Learning English series offers up-to-date research on the rapidly changing field of language assessment. The book features original research with chapters reporting on a variety of international education settings from a range of diverse perspectives. Covering a broad range of key topics—including scoring processes, test development, and student and teacher perspectives—contributors offer a comprehensive overview of the landscape of language assessment and discuss the consequences and impact for learners, teachers, learning programs, and society. Focusing on the assessment of language proficiency, this volume provides an original compendium of cutting-edge research that will benefit TESOL and TEFL students, language assessment scholars, and language teachers.

Interest in and literature on language assessment literacy (LAL) has increased rapidly in recent years. This volume is one of a pair of titles designed to expand the current literature and incorporate multiple viewpoints from this area. Volume 1 collates LAL research studies with diverse stakeholder constituencies to share important findings. The empirical research chapters are supplemented with insightful reflections on the process of learning about language assessment from personal perspectives.Language assessment is widely used for educational purposes, employment and migration/citizenship. As awareness of LAL becomes ever more critical in education and wider society, this volume will be a rich resource for academic researchers and graduate students, as well as for language test developers, teachers, teacher trainers, policymakers, and other decision-makers involved in the use of language assessment.