What is Language Testing?

"A definition is enclosing a wilderness

of idea within a wall of words."
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Definition 1
"Language Testing is the practice and study of evaluating the proficiency of an individual in
using a particular language effectively."
Priscilla Allen, University of Washington.
(Winning entry from the 2009/10 "definition" competition run on this website)
Definition 2
"The activity of developing and using language tests. As a psychometric activity, language
testing traditionally was more concerned with the production, development and analysis of
tests. Recent critical and ethical approaches to language testing have placed more emphasis
on the uses of language tests. The purpose of a language test is to determine a persons
knowledge and/or ability in the language and to discriminate that persons ability from that of
others. Such ability may be of different kinds, achievement, proficiency or aptitude. Tests,
unlike scales, consist of specified tasks through which language abilities are elicited. The
term language assessment is used in free variation with language testing although it is also
used somewhat more widely to include for example classroom testing for learning and
institutional examinations."
Alan Davies, University of Edinburgh.
Definition 3
"In the context of language teaching and learning, 'assessment' refers to the act of collecting
information and making judgments about a language learner's knowledge of a language and
ability to use it."
Carol Chapelle and Geoff Brindley, Universities of Iowa State and Macquarie.
Definition 4
I have to say that this is my personal favourite.
"It is a species of sortition infinitely preferable to the ancient method of casting lots for
honours and offices."
F. Y. Edgeworth, in his 1888 paper The Statistics of Examinations.

Founding Documents of Modern Language Testing

Sometimes complex phenomena like language testing are explained in relation to their roots.
It is often said that modern language testing dates to 1961, because this was the date of the
publication of the first book on language testing by Robert Lado, and a paper setting out the
scope of language testing by J. B. Carroll. Below are two PDF documents. One is a short
extract from the beginning of Lado's Language Testing, and the second is
Carroll's Fundamental Considerations in Testing for English Language Proficiency of
Foreign Students.
Lado: extracts from Language Testing
Carroll: Fundamental Considerations in Testing
On this website you can explore many of the concepts underlying the modern practice of
language testing. A useful place to start is by watching our short videos on key ideas in
language testing.

Introductory Video

I made this introductory video for tesolacademic.org in 2017. It is available

from the tesolacademic website and YouTube, from where it is embedded
on this web page.

Other Websites

Wikipedia has an entry on language testing. This is its current definition:

"Language Assessment or Language Testing is a field of study under
the umbrella of applied linguistics. Its main focus is the assessment
of first, second or other language in the school, college, or
university context; assessment of language use in the workplace;
and assessment of language in the immigration, citizenship, and
asylum contexts."This is attributed to the 2008 edition of the
Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Vol 7.,
Language Testing and assessment.

Test Preparation

Definitions and key texts are useful to understand a topic. Perhaps even
more powerful are scenarios where language testing is an important
ingredient in decision making. Below are six scenarios, each of which
provides information on the language issues at stake, and presents
questions for discussion, debate, and further study.