This course has been designed to suit the needs of MA students in English education to develop a comprehensive and situated understanding of the principles and practices of language testing and assessment. The aims of this course are to highlight key issues in language testing and assessment, review the characteristics of good language tests and provide guidance for constructing valid and reliable language tests and developing appropriate classroom assessment strategies. Both large-scale tests and classroom-based assessment are addressed in this course, covering topics such as teaching and testing, kinds of tests and testing, reliability, validity, washback effect, formative assessment, assessment of/for/as learning, and so forth.

CILO-1: Design and implement language assessment and testing with a wide range of state-of-the-art ideas and methods, and relate language assessment and testing to theories and assumptions about language, and learning, and human abilities; CILO-2: Achieve an advanced level in designing classroom tests and evaluate published tests; CILO-3: Use tests as research tools, e.g. in formative curriculum evaluation; CILO-4: Address the concerns of professional test writers.