Developing Guidelines for Practice for Language Assessment in Asia: Principles and Methodology

Venue: Conference room 407, Babel (Building 139), Parkville Campus, The University of Melbourne

Professor Yan Jin, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Overview

As a response to the call for professionalisation, regional and national testing organisations have developed various codes or guidelines for language assessment practice (eg ALTE, 2001; JLTA, 2002; EALTA, 2006). Professionalisation is an even more pressing need for the field of language assessment in Asia, given the increasing trend to develop and use locally produced language tests and the huge number of English language learners in the region (Cheng & Curits, 2010; Weir & Wu, forthcoming; Yu & Jin, 2016). In this presentation, while admitting the usefulness and relevance of international guidelines to language assessment in Asia, we argue that there is a need for Asian language testing organisations and associations to collaborate and develop guidelines for practice which fit the Asian context better. First, the rationale for such an endeavour is provided through an analysis of macro-level social and educational contexts as well as micro-level features of language assessment in Asia. Second, principles for the development of guidelines for both large-scale language testing and classroom-based language assessment are discussed. Third, the methodology of developing the guidelines is suggested by drawing on research of language assessment literacy and the experience of empirically developing a code of practice for language assessment practice in China (Fan, 2011; Fan & Jin, 2013; Fan, 2018). Finally, the presentation will end with a discussion of the challenges facing the daunting task of developing and implementing the guidelines of practice for language assessment in Asia.

Presenter

Professor Yan Jin

Yan Jin is a professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Since 1991, she has been involved in the design and development of the College English Test (CET) in China. She has been Chair of the National College English Testing Committee since 2004. She is currently co-President of the Asian Association for Language Assessment and co-editor-in-chief of the Springer open-access journal Language Testing in Asia. She has been involved in many research projects related to the development and validation of large-scale language assessments and has published many articles in academic journals. She is on the editorial board of international journals such as Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, Classroom Discourse, The International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching and Chinese journals such as Foreign Language Testing and Teaching, Foreign Languages in China, Foreign Language World, Foreign Language Education in China, Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies.