Annie Brown – författare

This Dictionary of Language Testing was written over a number of years by a group of researchers at the Language Testing Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. It contains some 600 entries, each listed under a headword with extensive cross-referencing. It is intended for those who may or may not have had experience in the field of language assessment but who do have a need for information. It is intended as a first stage in meeting that need, and intends to provide an orientation and, where appropriate, indicate where next to look.

This book was the winner of the 2005 Jacqueline A. Ross Dissertation Award for second or foreign language testing.The assessment of speaking skills is an important part of the language learning process, whether carried out by teachers in the classroom or through proficiency tests administered by testing agencies. However, the complex and subjective nature of speaking assessment raises a number of important questions about the validity, reliability and fairness of test procedures. This book, which is based on research into the speaking test of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), shows how the performance of learners in oral proficiency interviews cannot be taken unequivocally as an indication of their ability, as variation in interviewer behaviour can have an impact both on learner performance and on ratings outcomes.

This volume includes selected papers from the 28th Language Testing Research Colloquium, held at the University of Melbourne (Australia) in July 2006. The papers selected for this volume share a common theme – that of ‘performance’. Not only do they focus on performance assessments of second or foreign language speaking and writing, but they also focus on the performance of the participants – the candidate (or candidates) and the raters – and the construction of that performance through the tasks and the assessment criteria.