Principles and practice in language testing: compliance or conflict?
The basic principles of professional, ethical language testing are increasingly well known in Europe. The creation of the European Association for Language Testing and Assessment has given added impetus to the desire of many organisations and education systems to modernise the way in which they assess the outcomes of language learning. "The purpose of EALTA is to promote the understanding of theoretical principles of language testing and assessment, and the improvement and sharing of testing and assessment practices throughout Europe." (Mission Statement) In this paper I will make reference to the most important of these theoretical principles, as followed, for example, by the British Council's Hungarian Examination Reform Teacher Support Project. However, I will point out that much work remains to be done if these principles are to be respected in practice, since merely claiming validity, reliability and positive washback is no substitute for providing evidence to back up such claims. Moreover, without evidence of validity and reliability, linking exams to the CEFR is impossible. I shall argue that much work remains to be done to professionalise language testing in Europe, and I shall discuss examples of unprofessional practice, and speculate on the reasons for such practice.

Prof. J Charles Alderson
Professor of Linguistics and English Language Education at Lancaster University
Author of Assessing Reading (2000), Diagnosing foreign language proficiency: the interface between learning and assessment (2005); co-editor of journal Language Testing (1997-2001); co-editor of the Cambridge Language Assessment series; editor of the series INTO EUROPE; scientific coordinator of the DIALANG project.