International symposium EVAL 19

Symposium Education
October 24, 2019 - October 26, 2019Saint-Martin-d'Hères - Domaine universitaire
Assessing language acquisition: from formative to certificative.

Since the birth of assessment and testing as scientific disciplines in the 1950s, the dominant trends in language-culture didactics have always been reflected in the forms that language tests have taken: “discrete point testing” (Lado, 1961) was inspired by the structuralist and behaviorist approaches in psychology and cognitive sciences, then the communicative testing (Morrow, 1979) put forward the textual, written and oral unity, the ability to convey aBeyond formal acceptability, and the assessment of reception and production skills.

In recent years, the scientific community has focused on key emerging concepts, such as situational and interactional authenticity in 'task-based testing' or assessment for formative or diagnostic purposes, to name just a few fundamentals (Hamp-Lyons, 2016). Today's candidates increasingly present multilingual language profiles, are or will be internationally mobile and competent in the field of ICTE, whatever the training and assessment context (school, university, certification center, language center, LANSAD, etc.).

At the same time, the spread of tests and certifications, which often have a major impact on the lives of candidates and even institutions, has highlighted the need to design and deploy valid, reliable and fair systems.

Through the following axes, we'd like to look at some of the current topics of discussion in language assessment research.

    Axis 1: Validity of a language evaluation system: theoretical reflections and feedback.

    Axis 2: Evaluation of intercomprehension and plurilingual approaches

    Axis 3: Evaluation and language interactio

Discover the interventions of the conference’s guest-speakers.

Intervention of Tim McNamara
 

Intervention of James Purpura
 

Intervention of Anna Cardinaletti
 

Round Table with Jean-Paul Narcy-Combes et Sébastien Georges
 
Published on  January 8, 2025
Updated on  January 8, 2025