Language Testing by Tim McNamara
The Language testing, dedicated to assessing the level of language skills, will fancy students, teachers, and even administrative employees; to everyone who is in one way or another deals with foreign languages.
Language testing is widely considered an obscure and complex section of applied linguistics that requires careful study. According to Tim McNamara, the author, his main criterion when writing the manual was to reduce reader’s fear of the area.
Testing is a universal feature of social life. At all times people have been taking different sorts of tests to prove their abilities. The essence of linguistic tests, although close to generally recognized, has its own distinctive features. Especially nowadays, when completely new approaches to testing have emerged. The task of the book is to explain the reasons for the emergence of an advanced view on language skill tests, to show their importance and practical usefulness.
The author presents various types of tests and their applications. McNamara compares the creation of a new test to the process of getting a new car on the road. It involves a design stage, a construction stage, and a try-out stage before the test is finally operational. Only the process of creating is cyclical. The author explains the cycles and stages of test creation in detail in one of the chapters.
The author also describes another process of more importance, the process of evaluation. Here Tim McNamara deals with the issue of subjectivity, thinking about the ways to avoid it.
Readers will definitely be interested in a chapter dedicated to the social side of language testing. It examines testing from the perspectives of sociology, political science, and the theory of discursive analysis. The author writes about the test as a way of social and cultural isolation. He uses as an example the Australian-led testing during World War II. Its aim was at finding immigrants and sending them off without protection. Author’s focus here is on the ethical side of the science.