Assessment in Multilingual Societies
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ASSESSMENT IN MULTILINGUAL SOCIETIES
INTRODUCTION
The issue of assessment in multilingual societies has become important especially in the last three decades as we realize that multilingualism is now a legitimate reality around the world. Given that multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception, maintaining and developing multilingual competence (MC) becomes a necessity. Shohamy (2006) makes a strong case for encouraging MC and arguably so, since a majority of students arrive in schools with MC and hold multiple identities; and even if they arrive as monolinguals, it is imperative that they have opportunities to acquire additional languages from peers or from instruction. There is also evidence to suggest that multilinguals may have advantages over monolinguals in areas such as negotiating, working with people from culturally diverse backgrounds, interpreting and communicating information and thinking creatively (see Baker and Jones, 1998; Bialystok, 2001; Graddol, 2006). The present chapter looks mainly at assessment of English language (henceforth assessment) in a multilingual environment and suggests that the assessment issues and concerns discussed here can also be extrapolated to other languages. Assessment here refers to all methods of testing and assessment, including alternative assessment. Testers sometimes make a distinction between testing as a standardized, large-scale exercise that fulfils the requirements of validity and reliability as opposed to assessment as school based tests that might not be consciously guided by such requirements. This distinction is not maintained here and therefore the terms testing and assessment are used interchangeably. Further, a multilingual society is one where more than one language or language variety is spoken. In this sense, multilingualism also includes multidialectalism. In what follows, this chapter discusses the various assessment issues that are relevant to multilingual societies. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
Work on assessment in the last several decades has centred around the notions of ‘what’ and ‘how’ in testing, i.e. what constitutes language proficiency and therefore what aspects of proficiency one needs to test and how to test it. In tracing the early developments in the area, it is E. Shohamy and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 7: Language Testing and Assessment, 19–36. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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R A M A M AT H E W
necessary to understand the developments that different models of language proficiency have undergone vis-à-vis the kind of norms that are applied in a given testing situation. We will examine the issues in turn and look at what obtains at the present moment and what the future promises for the testing field. Models of Language Proficiency The discussions about models of language proficiency in the area of language testing have been vibrant with ongoing debate in the last three decades. McNamara’s (1996) comprehensive review provides a trajectory of developments
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