Language assessment
[1] The assessment may include listening, speaking, reading, writing, an integration of two or more of these skills, or other constructs of language ability.
Approximately 10 years later, a full suite of tests had been assembled: "an English language test battery", which was administered to incoming foreign students at Michigan and other universities and was known as the Michigan English Language Assessment Battery.
In 1953, the ELI also developed the ECPE (Examination for the Certificate of Proficiency in English) exam, under contract to the United States Information Agency, for use abroad.
TOEFL was launched in 1961 and was designed to assess the English language ability of students applying for admission to U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities.
New technology has also made a presence in the field: Versant's English and Dutch assessments use phone technology to record the speaking and automated scoring of their speaking tests, and the ETS is currently experimenting with automated scoring of their writing tests.
Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey, the home of the TOEFL, offers an annual outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award in Second or Foreign Language and the University of Cambridge, UK, also offers an annual outstanding master's degree Award in second language testing.
All of these associations have developed Codes of Ethics and Practice that all language assessment professionals are expected to adhere to.
In the last few years, it has been held in different parts of the world: Temecula, California, US (2004); Ottawa, Canada (2005); Melbourne, Australia (2006); Barcelona, Spain (2007); Hangzhou, China (2008), and Denver, Colorado (2009), Cambridge, UK (2010), Ann Arbor, Michigan (2011), Princeton, New Jersey (2012), and Seoul, South Korea (2013).
ALTE's international conferences are held in different cities in Europe: Barcelona, Spain (2002); Berlin, Germany (2005); Cambridge, UK (2008); Krakow, Poland (2011); Paris,France (2014); Bologna, Italy (2017) ) with regional conferences in Perugia, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, and Lisbon.
Other journals that publish articles from the field include Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, TESOL Quarterly, Assessing Writing, and System.
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