Assessing English for Professional Purposes (Routledge Research in English for Specific Purposes)

Reference

Knoch, Ute

Macqueen, Susy

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Routledge

** WINNER OF ILTA/SAGE Best Book Award 2020 ** Assessing English for Professional Purposes provides a state-of-the-art account of the various kinds of language assessments used to determine people's abilities to function linguistically in the workplace. At a time when professional expertise is increasingly mobile and diverse, with highly trained professionals migrating across national boundaries to apply their skills in English-speaking settings, this book offers a renewed agenda for inquiry into language assessments for professional purposes (LAPP). Many of these experts work in high-risk environments where communication breakdowns can have serious consequences. This risk has been identified by governments and professional bodies, who implement language tests for gate-keeping purposes. Through a sociological lens of risk and responsibility, this book: <ul> <li>provides a detailed overview of both foundational and recent literature in the field;</li> <li>offers conceptual tools for specific purpose assessment, including a socially oriented theory of construct;</li> <li>develops theory and practice in key areas, such as needs analysis, test development, validation and policy;</li> <li>significantly broadens the scope of the assessment of English for professional purposes to include a range of assessment practices for both professionals and laypeople in professional settings.</li> </ul> Assessing English for Professional Purposes is key reading for researchers, graduate students and practitioners working in the area of English for Specific Purposes assessment.

Scoring Second Language Spoken and Written Performance: Issues, Options and Directions (British Council Monographs on Modern Language)

Jin, Yan

Fairbairn, Judith

University of Toronto Press

The ability to speak and write effectively is widely recognized as an important skill in many contexts and for many purposes, both personal, educational and professional. Because these skills are considered important in second and foreign language learning contexts, they are often included in performance assessments. The scoring of such performances is, however, a complex undertaking and has attracted much attention, both in first and second language learning contexts. The increasing use of automated scoring systems has added to this complexity in recent years. It is therefore all the more surprising that there is no book available that provides an overview of this topic area - the scoring of second language performances. This monograph fills this gap, by drawing together the latest literature in the area. It focusses on issues relating to both rater-mediated assessments and sets out consideration in relation to automated scoring systems (and other technology) which are increasingly used in our field. This monograph provides a useful introduction to graduate students, researchers, test developers, other practitioners and teachers to this topic which has in many ways dominated the field of language assessment over many decades.

The diagnostic assessment of writing is an important aspect of language testing which has often been neclected in the literature. However, it is an area which poses special challenges to practioners both in the classroom and in large-scale testing situations. This book presents a study which set out to develop and validate a rating scale specifically designed for the diagnostic assessment of writing in an academic English setting. The scale was developed by analysing a large number of writing performances produced by both native speakers of English and learners of English as an additional language. The rating scale was then validated using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The study showed that a detailed data-based rating scale is more valid and more useful for diagnostic purposes than the more commonly used impressionistic rating scale.

Diagnostic Writing Assessment: The Development and Validation of a Rating Scale (Language Testing and Evaluation)

Words, Language & Grammar

Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Knoch, Ute. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Knoch, Ute