Series editors' preface

Summary

Given the well-documented wash back effects of testing on curriculum and teaching, almost any new book on language testing is potentially important for testing specialists and non-specialists alike. This is especially true of the present volume, however, for it is the first to deal exclusively and comprehensively with what must surely be the future of language testing in many contexts, namely, criterion-referenced language testing.

In so many situations, the goal of assessment is to determine whether any or all individuals can or cannot do something at a level determined by experts to be relevant for future success, not to ind out how they compare with one another, as is the case with norm-referenced measurement. In a driving test, for instance, the question is whether John and/or Mary can drive safely, not which one drives better than the other. And so it is with much language testing. Can students understand particular spoken registers of language X well enough to follow a lecture in their field of study delivered in X? Can they speak, read and write at the required levels? Can these individuals make themselves understood well enough in language Y to travel unaccompanied in a country where only Y is spoken? Do these applicants command enoughof language Z to take a vocational training course delivered in Z or to perform well in a job using Z?

While criterion-referenced testing (CRT) has come of age in many fields, and while articles about it have occasionally appeared in language teaching journals for some 20 years, there has not until now been a book in language teaching and applied linguistics devoted solely to the topic.