Testing the Untestable in Language Education

Amos Paran · Lies Sercu

Jun 2010 · New Perspectives on Language and Education Book 17 · Multilingual Matters

About this ebook

The testing and assessment of language competence continues to be a much debated issue in foreign language teaching and research. This book is the first one to address the testing of four important dimensions of foreign language education which have been left largely unconsidered: learner autonomy, intercultural competence, literature and literary competence, and the integration of content and language learning. Each area is considered through a theoretical framework, followed by two empirical studies, raising questions of importance to all language teachers: How can one test literary competence? Can intercultural competence be measured? What about the integrated assessment of content-and-language in CLIL and teaching? Is progress in autonomous learning skill gaugeable? The book constitutes essential reading for anyone interested in the testing and assessment of seemingly largely untestable aspects of foreign language competence.

About the author

Amos Paran is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Education, University of London, where he is Programme Leader of the MA TESOL. He has a special interest in master’s level teaching by distance learning, and has also been involved in testing projects in a variety of different languages. His main research interests are reading in a foreign language, literature in language teaching, and distance education.

Lies Sercu is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Leuven. Her research interests concern the promotion of intercultural competence through foreign language education as well as SLA vocabulary acquisition from reading and writing texts in a foreign language. She has been involved in the development of language tests and blended learning environments for the professionalisation of language teachers. She has widely published in major international journals on intercultural competence and foreign vocabulary acquisition.