8 - Assessing Advancedness in the Age of Identity Construction and Global Citizenship

Summary

Previous chapters showed that learners are ready to engage in instruction that addresses sophistication. It therefore behooves the field to examine what the construct of “pronunciation” means to both learners and practitioners.

The present chapter explores the need for new assessment criteria; it makes a call for research incorporating variables that would examine, for example, L2 learners’ awareness of what we call “sophisticated-language use” so as to match their manifested beliefs with how they are able to describe what advancedness should look like.

Are we, as scholars, helping to perpetuate elite-bilingualism and nativespeakerism? And how do we affect identity construction among L2 learners and heritage speakers? We assert that the communicative approach in teaching and assessment needs to shift to a more holistic and sociocognitive approach. This also extends to the need to reconceptualize our focus of assessment so that all skills, as well as other forms of literacy and cultural awareness are included.

What remains to be examined in the next chapters is learners’ self-perception, identity construction and awareness of their own social agency as L2 speakers