Test Talk! provides a wealth of practical advice on how to deal with common issues that may arise with student testing, from kindergarten through high school. Authors Cheli Cerra and Ruth Jacoby identify 50 “snapshots” of situations that parents typically face when dealing with testing and then give you practical tools to help your children succeed, including helpful checklists, worksheets, and progress reports.

Oral assessments are of vital importance to second language learners, but how can teachers and examiners best test L2 learner talk and interaction? Bringing together theory and research within the field of L2 oral proficiency, with the concept of L2 encompassing any language learned later than the early childhood years, this book provides a state-of-the art overview of what is at stake for L2 learners and examiners, and advice on how to approach testing and assessment. Using data and findings from empirical research to illustrate and discuss key topics, Testing Talk takes the reader step-by-step through the major concepts and issues in the oral assessment of second languages, with a main focus on L2 English. Investigating and explaining the most important educational and interactional issues facing both examiners and test-takers, such as the factors which come into play during speaking tests, the differences between common test formats, and the challenge of ensuring equity in assessment, this book offers research-based advice on ways to design test tasks and in-depth insights into the assessment of L2 speaking. Featuring a glossary of key terms and concepts, discussion questions and further reading for each chapter, and a comprehensive companion website hosting a wealth of additional materials, including authentic test recordings and assessment tasks to be used by researchers and practitioners alike, this is the only book needed in order to understand, design, and assess interactive oral L2 tests.

Under No Child Left Behind, nearly every teacher faces a high-stakes balancing act; managing the often incompatible responsibilities of teaching students meaningfully or preparing them for standardized tests. Through their experiences teaching at a school that struggled to meet state test standards driven by NCLB, authors Amy Greene and Glennon Melton discovered a way to raise scores without compromising their strong beliefs about good teaching and learning. Their concise and easy-to-use bookTest Talk: Integrating Test Preparation Into Reading Workshop includes lesson plans and practice passages, as well as sample questions and suggested language to use during lessons. This compelling book shows that teachers don't have to choose between best practice teaching and test preparation; effective test-taking strategies can be integrated into authentic reading instruction. The authors demonstrate how to improve performance on tests without resorting to teaching to the test,- mnemonic devices, or other gimmicks. Instead, they focus on encouraging student readers to explore tests as a specific genre containing unique language, format, and cues. Throughout the book, classroom vignettes show how seamlessly one can weave the test genre into reading workshop and connect those specialized skills to more general reading strategies. It is an invaluable resource for any teacher who struggles with how to prepare kids for tests without sacrificing real teaching and learning.

Braaten and Felopulos describe how the evaluation process occurs in children, including the role (if any) that testing plays in diagnosing and devising treatment plans for dyslexia, ADHD, math and reading disorders, autism and Asperger syndrome, depression, anxiety, and other conditions.

This edited volume brings together 10 cutting-edge empirical studies on the realities of English language learning, teaching and testing in a wide range of global contexts where English is an additional language. It covers three themes: learners’ development of interactional competence, the organization of teaching and testing practices, and sociocultural and ideological forces that may impact classroom interaction. With a decided focus on English-as-a-Foreign-Language contexts, the studies involve varied learner populations, from children to young adults to adults, in different learning environments around the world. The insights gained will be of interest to EFL professionals, as well as teacher trainers, policymakers and researchers.

This book brings together a collection of current research on the assessment of oral proficiency in a second language. Fourteen chapters focus on the use of the language proficiency interview or LPI to assess oral proficiency. The volume addresses the central issue of validity in proficiency assessment: the ways in which the language proficiency interview is accomplished through discourse.Contributors draw on a variety of discourse perspectives, including the ethnography of speaking, conversation analysis, language socialization theory, sociolinguistic variation theory, human interaction research, and systemic functional linguistics. And for the first time, LPIs conducted in German, Korean, and Spanish are examined as well as interviews in English. This book sheds light on such important issues as how speaking ability can be defined independently of an LPI that is designed to assess it and the extent to which an LPI is an authentic representation of ordinary conversation in the target language. It will be of considerable interest to language testers, discourse analysts, second language acquisition researchers, foreign language specialists, and anyone concerned with proficiency issues in language teaching and testing.

The testing and assessment of second language learners is an essential part of the language learning process. Glenn Fulcher's Testing Second Language Speaking is a state-of-the-art volume that considers the assessment of speaking from historical, theoretical and practical perspectives. The book offers the first systematic, comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the testing of second language speaking. Written in a clear and accessible manner, it covers: Explanations of the process of test design Costing test design projects How to put the test into practice Evaluation of speaking tests Task types for testing speaking Testing learners with disabilities It also contains a wealth of examples, including task types that are commonly used in speaking tests, approaches to researching speaking tests and specific methodologies that teachers, students and test developers may use in their own projects. Successfully integrating practice and theory, this book demystifies the process of testing speaking and provides a thorough treatment of the key ethical and technical issues in speaking evaluation.