Developments in Glocal Language Testing

Evdokia Karavas is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Deputy Director of the RCeL (Research Centre for Language Teaching, Testing and Assessment). She holds a PhD from the University of Warwick, where she taught for a number of years as lecturer at the Centre for English Language Teacher Education. Her research interests include language teacher education and development, language testing and assessment, curriculum/programme evaluation and implementation research. Bessie Mitsikopoulou is Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Linguistics, Faculty of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is the Director of the Centre of Self-Access Learning and Materials Development and she has co-ordinated various projects in the areas of language education, curriculum reform, critical literacies and the production of digital interactive materials for foreign language education. Her research interests are in the areas of critical discourse analysis, applied and educational linguistics, new media and digital technologies in education, critical and academic literacies, and writing theories and practices.

• CONTENTS: Evdokia Karavas/Bessie Mitsikopoulou: Introduction: Issues and challenges in glocal language testing: The case of the Greek State Certificate in Language Proficiency – Bessie Mitsikopoulou/Evdokia Karavas/Christina Lykou: The sociosemiotic language view underlying the design of the KPG exams – Elisabeth Apostolou: Oral text difficulty in foreign language listening comprehension testing – Xenia Delieza: The impact of oral examiners’ conduct on candidates’ performance in the KPG exam – Amalia Balourdi: Investigating ideologies in texts used in global and «glocal» language testing – Styliani Karatza:Visual matters in language testing: Exploring intersemiotic meaning making in reading comprehension source texts – Trisevgeni Liontou: Test-takers’ strategies in responding to KPG English language reading comprehension tasks: Evidence from retrospective think-aloud protocols – Virginia-Maria Blani: A comparative study of cohesion in L2 candidates’ texts – Vasso Oikonomidou: The effect of source text on read-to-write task difficulty – Maria Stathopoulou: Assessing cross-language mediation in the Greek national multilingual exam suite: Test-takers’ language performance and strategy use – Voula Gotsoulia: Documenting language proficiency levels using learner data from the KPG examinations suite – Bessie Mitsikopoulou/Evdokia Karavas/Smaragda Papadopoulou: KPG e-school: The diffusion and implementation of an educational innovation – Evdokia Karavas/Bessie Mitsikopoulou: Conclusion: (G)Local alternatives in testing.