Multilingual Testing and Assessment

The field of multilingual testing and assessment has grown rapidly in recent years due to the widespread need to integrate immigrant populations into mainstream education and to provide fair and equitable forms of assessment for all students. However, a continuing emphasis on bilingual students has created a significant gap in testing and assessment research. This book addresses the need for research and guidance on testing multilingual students: at its heart is the difference between designing multilingual tests and testing multilingual individuals. The author introduces an integrated approach to testing and assessment, a flexible approach that combines information about multilingual learners' knowledge, skills and abilities with information about their language background and living environment. The book provides an overview of existing research conducted with multilingual populations; provides guidelines for test-writers, teachers and educators that outline the steps involved in the design, administration, scoring and interpretation of tests for multiple language speakers; and demonstrates how to use the integrated approach to testing and assessment in a multilingual educational context.

In this ground-breaking book, De Angelis successfully challenges monolingual perspectives on testing and the bilingual bias in assessment expressed by traditional attitudes and practices. The novel idea of integrated testing and assessment is well-grounded in theoretical considerations and supported by examples of research on its effectiveness in different educational contexts. An excellent source for those who work in education with multilingual populations., In this wonderful book, the author argues convincingly that multilingual testing and assessment requires an integrated and flexible approach situated between the rigid traditional and the unviable holistic approaches. This book is a breath of fresh air and a must-read for researchers, educators and teachers., This volume serves as the missing link between research on multilingualism and the implementation of multilingual interaction within educational contexts. Usually, testing and assessing are based on single concepts, which means that the introduction of new concepts such as multilingualism are very often neglected, because there are no testing tools available. This work is the first definitive effort to provide us with such tools.

Gessica De Angelis is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Centre for Language and Communication Studies at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She researches and publishes extensively within the areas of multilingualism, multilingual testing and assessment, crosslinguistic influence and language education. Among her works is Third or Additional Language Acquisition (2007, Multilingual Matters).