This book offers a descriptive account of the world of the British external examiner: who they are, what they do, how they are appointed, and what problems they face. Findings are based on a questionnaire survey of and personal interviews with examiners. The external examiner is independent of the university awarding the degree and quite…

The Center for the Study of Evaluation's (CSE) expository and narrative rating scales have been developed to meet the need for instructionally relevant methods for assessing students' writing competence. Research indicates that large numbers of raters can be trained in the use of these scales and that, during training and independent rating, they…

Many states currently offer bilingual certification or endorsement, encouraging both practicing teachers and prospective teachers to complete their requirements necessary to add this certification on to their regular teaching license. Although these requirements routinely include courses in bilingual education, the "second" language…

Problems inherent in the holistic scoring of essay examinations written by limited-English-speakers are examined, particularly in the context of one California state college in which English writing skills, holistically assessed, are required for graduation. These problems include lack of interrater reliability, raters' perceptions of their role,…

This collection of essays on measurement theory and language testing includes: "Computerized Adaptive Testing: Implications for Language Test Developers" (Peter Tung); "The Promise and Threat of Computerized Adaptive Assessment of Reading Comprehension" (Michael Canale); "Computerized Rasch Analysis of Item Bias in ESL…