VALIDITY IN LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

Abstract

All previous papers on language assessment in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics make explicit reference to validity. These reviews, like other work on language testing, use the term to refer to the quality or acceptability of a test. Beneath the apparent stability and clarity of the term, however, its meaning and scope have shifted over the past years. Given the significance of changes in the conception of validity, the time is ideal to probe its meaning for language assessment.