The journalist and scholar H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) once observed that “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” One would think that academic literacy, the ability to use academic language competently, would be the first and only language concern of the academic communities that make up the university. Such is the complexity of language problems, however, that not all solutions for them will have to do with making education and study more effective. Student communities may, for example, make language demands that are primarily politically inspired, and have little bearing on scholarship. When decision-makers yield to the politically expedient solution, that solution may be rationalized in many ways that might have the pretence of having to do with education, but that actually has no theoretical justification. There are at least two recent cases in South Africa where the language policies of universities were changed for reasons other than academic ones, with negative consequences that were foreseen, but ignored. Continue reading
Get them in line: language policy, language tests and language teaching
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Responsible 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: 
The 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.
Returning 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.
Is 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. 
Avasha 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 
The assessment of the 11 “home languages” at the end of secondary school in South Africa is patently unfair. That is the finding of a recent investigation that Colleen du Plessis (UFS), Sanet Steyn (NWU) and I report on in an 