In choosing language testing alternatives appropriate for their language education contexts, language teachers need to keep in mind the purposeful nature of language assessment. Purposeful language assessment involves focusing what is to be accomplished by language assessment, specifying intended uses of language tests, selecting appropriate…

Although there are many regions of the country that have historically been ethnically and linguistically diverse, school system data as well as information from the 2000 census and other sources has indicated that many hitherto homogeneous regions of the country and their educational institutions have experienced significant growth in populations…

This handbook, which focuses on foreign language teaching in the classroom, aims to describe the "state of the art" in testing. The first section considers the area of aptitude testing, particularly the diagnostic function of aptitude tests. A taxonomy of foreign language teaching objectives points out the need to classify the aims of foreign…