Evaluating students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (i.e., emergent bilinguals) presents challenges to evaluation teams, as distinguishing between a language disorder and typical second language development is more complex. The skills and knowledge required to do this task often exceed the level of training that evaluators…

Assessment has an important role in education and it has a critical role in the teaching process. Through appropriate assessment, teachers can classify and grade their students, give feedback and structure their teaching accordingly. Recently, educators and scientists have been becoming more interested in the requirements of assessment procedures…

Testing Spanish speakers presents certain challenges common to all testing circumstances involving test takers whose first language is not English. In addition, some unique challenges arise because there are many subpopulations of Spanish speakers both inside and outside of the United States. Spanish as spoken in Spain differs from that spoken in…

While the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' (ACTFL) proficiency guidelines have many proponents, critics find testing according to the guidelines costly and time-consuming. Winthrop College (South Carolina) has developed an approach to testing foreign language majors that tests all skill areas, can be administered using no…