Language testing: The state of the art (An online interview with James Dean Brown)

In this interview, JD Brown reflects on language testing/assessment. He suggests that language testing can be seen as a continuum with hard core positivist approaches at one end and post modernist interpretive perspectives at the other, and also argues that norm referencing (be it proficiency, placement, or aptitude testing) and criterion referencing (be it diagnostics, progress, or achievement testing) fall on this continuum. He further suggests that evaluation is done at the level of program or course but that assessment is focused on the classroom, and then argues that both assessment and evaluation exploit measurement and testing albeit to different effects. He then comments on his views about high-stakes and low-stakes testing as well as washback, and finally expresses serious concerns about the impacts of language policy on language testing by calling the current NS models into question. Relating his concerns to validity issues, he suggests that language testers need to consider other options to the NS model to serve the needs of speakers of other Englishes.