Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices is designed to offer a comprehensive survey of essential principles and tools for second language assessment. Its first and second editions have been successfully used in teacher-training courses, teacher certification curricula, and TESOL master of arts programs. As the third in a trilogy of teacher education textbooks, it is designed to follow H. Douglas Brown's other two books, Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (sixth edition, Pearson Education, 2014) and Teaching by Principles(fourth edition, Pearson Education, 2015). References to those two books are made throughout the current book. Language Assessment features uncomplicated prose and a systematic, spiraling organization. Concepts are introduced with practical examples, understandable explanations, and succinct references to supportive research. The research literature on language assessment can be quite complex and assume that readers have technical knowledge and experience in testing. By the end of Language Assessment, however, readers will have gained access to this not-so-frightening field. They will have a working knowledge of a number of useful, fundamental principles of assessment and will have applied those principles to practical classroom contexts. They will also have acquired a storehouse of useful tools for evaluating and designing practical, effective assessment techniques for their classrooms.

"The identification of language problems and subsequent evaluation of interventions depend in part on the availability of useful and psychometrically robust assessments to determine the nature and severity of their problems and monitor progress. The purpose of these assessments may be to measure a child's language proficiency, that is, how they perform relative to other children and whether they have the language level expected and needed for schooling, or they may have a specifically clinical purpose, to identify the occurrence and nature of a disorder. The purpose of assessment is key to the aspects of language targeted in an assessment and the methods used to target these. In the case of spoken English, there are many language assessments ranging from broad language tests to more narrowly focused measures, reflecting the complexity of the language system and its use"--

Learn how to plan, implement, and evaluate common language assessments for your English learners. With this step-by-step guide, teachers, school leaders, and administrators will find organizing principles, lead questions, and action steps all directing you toward collaborative assessment. Yield meaningful information for and about EL learning preferences, build student self-assessment, and inform your instructional decision making based on reliable results.

The significant challenges faced by English Language Learners (ELLs) become greater during the middle and high school years, when they must learn more abstract academic concepts with emergent English language skills and differing levels of background knowledge. To meet these challenges, ELLs need immediate feedback about how the development of their language abilities interacts with their academic performance; and teachers need practical strategies to help ELLs develop the specific content and language abilities necessary for success. In Formative Language Assessment for English Learners, the research team of Rita MacDonald, Timothy Boals, Mariana Castro, H. Gary Cook, Todd Lundberg, and Paula A. White demonstrates what good language assessment for formative purposes is, explains the cycle of formative language assessment, and shows how it unfolds stage by stage in a school setting. Based on a five-year collaborative project with middle and high school teachers in three major school districts, the book presents a process for: Weaving a language focus into content lessons Analyzing students' language from writing samples to help them broaden their linguistic choices Creating active partnerships with students as they learn and practice new ways to use English. When classrooms are defined by effective language assessment for formative purposes, they become dynamic spaces in which teachers can use that information to plan clear, attainable steps to increase student learning, and students develop deeper understandings of both academic content and academic language. Formative Language Assessment for English Learners provides practical strategies to implement a unique process for formative assessment that can truly change classroom practice. This team of authors works together at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and have collaborated on formative language assessment for English Language Learners through their work for WIDA (World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment), a 36-state consortium that supports academic language development for linguistically diverse students through standards, assessment, research, and professional development.

This book provides language teachers with guidelines to develop suitable listening tests.

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.

This book provides teachers with an entirely new approach to developing and using classroom-based language assessments. This approach is based on current theory and practice in the field of language assessment and on an understanding of the assessment needs of classroom teachers. The following key questions are addressed: • Why do I need to assess? What beneficial consequences do I want to help bring about? How can my assessments help my students learn better and help me improve my teaching? • When and how often do I need to assess? What decisions do I need to make to help bring about these beneficial consequences? • What do I need to assess? How can I define the abilities that I want to assess? • How can I assess my students? What kinds of assessment tasks should I create? How can I score my students’ responses to these tasks? The authors guide the reader step-by-step through the process of developing and using classroom-based assessments with clear explanations and definitions of key terms, illustrative examples, and activities for applying the approach in practice. Extra resources are available on the website: www.oup.com/elt/teacher/lact Lyle Bachman is Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He serves as a consultant in language testing research projects and in developing language assessments for universities and government agencies around the world, and he conducts courses and training workshops in language assessment. Barbara Damböck was Director of Studies of the English Department at the Teacher Training Academy in Dillingen, Germany, from 2003 to 2011. From 2003 to 2017 she supervised the training of oral examiners for the certification examination for elementary school English teachers in Bavaria. She has extensive experience as a classroom teacher, teacher trainer, and teacher of teacher trainers. She conducts courses and workshops for teachers and teacher trainers around the world.