Abstract
This book is a part of the Oxford Key Concepts for the Language Classroom series, edited by Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada, who are the authors of the highly successful How Languages Are Learned – a staple in pre-service language education programs worldwide and now in its fourth edition (2013). As in this seminal text, the books in the series are designed to be “research-led” introductions to different areas of language learning with a focus on primary and secondary school classrooms. Other titles in the series include reading, content-based language teaching, grammar and meaning, literacy, and oral interaction.
The book contains five chapters: an introduction that presents foundational concepts and includes a discussion of uses of assessment; a chapter on theories of language development that focuses on academic language proficiency; a chapter that covers essential principles for assessing primary-school-aged children; a similar one that focuses on adolescents; and a final chapter that challenges readers to reflect on how their beliefs about assessment have changed after having read the book.
The series is recommended for practicing teachers as well as graduate students in teacher education as opposed to undergraduate or pre-service teachers. Therefore, Jang writes with experienced teachers in mind: she takes for granted, for example, that they are already adept in setting learning objectives for their students (p. 22). She frequently prompts readers to think about their own students and teaching context in relation to the issue being discussed.
Many of the book’s activities represent rich resources for teacher professional development. For example, the table on pp. 54–55 outlines a framework that assesses the complex interactive nature of school-aged academic language proficiency. This framework is accompanied by Activities 2.2–2.5, which taken together would be enough to inform an entire unit in a graduate course in language assessment or a multiple-day professional development workshop for teachers. Armed with samples of their students’ language, teachers can make use of this framework and related activities to articulate the complex construct they are attempting to capture.
All books in the series have a similar organization and the same basic elements. A series of “classroom snapshots” provides the impetus for discussions of key concepts in language assessment. “Spotlight studies” introduce the reader to a range of classroom-based research currently being undertaken in this area, and application activities solidify understandings and make connections to the readers’ current practice in the classroom. Almost all the classroom snapshots and the majority of the spotlight studies are drawn from North American settings, with a significant portion of the book dedicated to concerns of teachers in the United States, such as the selection and appropriate use of large-scale standardized English assessments. However, many of the issues raised will resonate with teachers everywhere, especially those working in standards- and test-driven contexts.
Writing for any series inevitably entails keeping within a prescribed format. In this case, two constraints – the content of each of the chapters and the intended audience – present challenges. For example, like all other books in the series, there are separate chapters dedicated to primary school or younger learners and to high school or adolescent learners. While Jang ably draws out the particularities of each age group, much of the work she discusses has implications for both ages – forcing her to make choices of what to discuss where. For example, she had to make the decision to place her discussion of portfolio assessment in the chapter on adolescent learners, even though it is made clear that it is an equally common and pertinent form of assessment in the primary grades.
The series introduction emphasizes the usefulness of this book for teachers of different specialties, stating, “The volumes are written for second language teachers, whether their students are minority language speakers learning the majority language or students learning a foreign language far from the communities where the language is spoken” (p. ix). This means that the readers, even though they all have a background in education, may have had their initial teacher training in any subject. This is undeniably an additional challenge for the author, especially when it comes to deciding what background knowledge to assume of the readership. While it can be assumed that terminology related to assessment will be new for all readers, a subset of the intended readership will be learning the concepts related to language pedagogy as well.
Jang has risen to this challenge: she has provided some accessible definitions within the text and has provided a glossary for many others (e.g., collocation, cloze test). If I were to make a single suggestion for the next edition of this book, it might be to include even more entries in this glossary – many terms related to language pedagogy (e.g., stress, intonation, pitch, semantic cues, lexical density) are used (at least in their first instance) without any gloss or definition. It could be that this is done on purpose, with the author assuming an intelligent and engaged readership who will take the initiative to search in order to fill any gaps in background knowledge.
As a result of this duality of audience, some of the examples seem more addressed to language teachers and some to teachers of other subjects. Figure 3.1 serves to bring these two audiences together, allowing teachers to place the assessments that interest them into a visual framework that accounts for everything from in-class formative assessment to externally mandated standardized tests. Teachers making use of this text will find this visualization helpful. They also may find that the best use of the book will be to choose the elements that are most pertinent to them and their particular concerns. In my case, for example, the next time I teach my graduate course in language assessment, I will definitely be making use of some of the spotlights on research, which give readers an insider perspective on the nuts and bolts of classroom-based research. For example, Jang provides a detailed description of the use of think-aloud protocols as a means of delving into cognitive processes of reading comprehension. In another section, she discusses the creation of tools to assess the goal orientations of students, parents, and teachers, and what her research has found about how these orientations are related to achievement levels.
When discussing her own research, she often includes extended excerpts of data along with accessible and concise interpretations of these data, including implications for current practice. This is a notable strength of the book: readers will not only be convinced of the benefits of applying this research to their current practice but may feel emboldened to conduct their own action research, either on their own or in collaboration with university colleagues. This is not only because the studies are explained clearly, but because many of the spotlights serve a double purpose as models of effective teacher–researcher collaboration.
Teachers will be challenged in reading this volume, but they will be rewarded with insightful interpretations of classroom assessment moments, as well as the opportunity to see their practice from an assessment perspective, and to imagine their own role as language assessors.