Recipe for a good professional life: To generosity, add imagination and cheer

A tribute to Christo van Rensburg

Prof. Christo van Rensburg

Christo van Rensburg, who died last week, was not only one of South Africa’s leading linguists, but also a considerable influence on my own work. It was particularly his voluminous report on Griqua Afrikaans that first brought him fame. My own debt to him is manifold: not only was he the supervisor of my doctoral thesis, but after he had set up and directed what eventually became known as the Unit for Academic Literacy at the University of Pretoria, he was instrumental in having me appointed as his successor. Continue reading

Academic literacy assessment: its role in times of change

What influence does the institutional, social or political landscape have on the way in which we test a person’s ability to handle academic language?  And how should one go about it? What impact should the tests have on language planning, instruction, and development?

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Top 14 design principles of language interventions

How to design a good language testResponsible design of language plans, courses or tests starts with the employment of one’s technical imagination, while allowing the design to be guided by the following principles: Continue reading

How to evaluate language interventions: the golden pentagon

The evaluation of language programme and instruction quality is highly relevant, everywhere. To test the effectiveness of a language intervention programme, one needs to take a holistic approach. For a language intervention to be effective, the designer has to bring into harmony five components: policy prescription, curriculum, instruction, learning and assessment When these are aligned, we have the golden pentagon of language intervention design. Where to begin? Continue reading

Comments invited on translation of Code

iltaThe Code of Ethics of the International Language Testing Association (ILTA) is a guide to language testers of how they should conduct their business in ways that are caring and compassionate, and at the same time deliberate and professional. It is complemented by locally formulated Codes of Practice. The Code of Ethics is already available in eleven languages.

A team of South African translators, Sanet Steyn and Gini Keyser, tasked by the Network of Expertise in Language Assessment (NExLA), did the initial translation of the Code of Ethics into Afrikaans. Then Colleen du Plessis, Albert Weideman, and language policy specialist Theo du Plessis produced a further two drafts. The fourth draft of the Code is now being presented to the language testing community at large, and has been placed on the NExLA website for comment. Continue reading

What goes into responsible language test design?

languageandcommunicationReturning to the still unresolved issue of how best to conceptualize test validation and validity, I attempt to answer this question in a special issue of Language & Communication that commemorates the work of the late Alan Davies. In particular, I argue that responsible test design encompasses ethicality and accountability, and is a conceptually clearer way of thinking about the quality of a language test.

Elsevier, the publisher of the journal, has generously, though for a limited period, provided unlimited access to the article that I contributed to this commemorative issue. The final published version of the article, “Does responsibility encompass ethicality and accountability in language test design?” is available until 17 December to anyone who clicks on the following link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Vy-wzlItpy~5. No sign up, registration or fees are required – you can simply click and read.

Ethics in language testing, local practices, once more in the spotlight

This is to share two thoughts with you.

First, that it’s time for language test developers in South Africa to begin to evaluate the ethicality of their assessment practices with reference to international codes, and second, to consider what local and contextual conditions might further shape our design work.

ilta

Does the South African language testing community need a Code of Ethics? That need has just been brought into focus again by an invitation from Tineke Brunfaut, coordinator of a project of the International Language Testing Association (ILTA; http://www.iltaonline.com/) aiming to have the ILTA Code of ethics translated into more languages, to translate it into Afrikaans. Continue reading

Cards on the table: the benefits of autoethnography

If you were a scientist working in the 1950’s, you would claim that your work, the theory that you subscribed to, and the results of your academic endeavours were all neutral and objective. In the heydays of modernism, the mere suggestion that there were any external, non-scientific influences on your work would have implied a threat to the integrity of that work.

Fast forward 60 years, and you would now find it difficult to acknowledge that your scientific analyses are indeed purely scientific, uninfluenced by any prejudice, and untainted by subjective issues. Continue reading

Is a theory of applied linguistics necessary?

9783319417295Is a theory of applied linguistics desirable? And if so, is it possible? My new book, Responsible design in applied linguistics: theory and practice (2017; Springer) proceeds from the thesis that applied linguistics needs a theoretical foundation. It is indeed possible to delineate its work (and specifically distinguish it from linguistics). Providing it with a theoretical foundation might additionally yield new insight into the principles that underlie applied linguistic designs. Those designs we encounter as the interventions that we call language courses, language tests and language policies. Continue reading

Make the information available, then accountability will follow

Construct Refinement in Tests of Academic LiteracyAvasha Rambiritch of the University of Pretoria and I have just written a chapter for a book edited by John Read (Post-admission Language Assessment of University Students, Springer, 2016) that shows how making sufficient information available about the conception, design, development, refinement and eventual administration of a test of language ability — in other words “telling the story of a test” — is the first step towards ensuring accountability for such tests. The test in question, the Test of Academic Literacy for Postgraduate Students (TALPS), is used to determine the academic literacy of prospective postgraduate students. For the full reference, see the bibliography on this site.   Continue reading