Hi Silvia,

I recently wrote a chapter on assessment for a handbook for EAP Teachers. I found the following books and papers useful while I was writing:

Bachman, L. F. and Palmer, A. S.  (1996) Language Testing in Practice: Designing and Developing Useful Language Tests. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This is the standard work. It contains a useful framework for evaluating tests based on tradeoffs between their validity, reliability, authenticity, impact and practicality. So for example, for IELTS with over one millian test takers, practicality has to take some precedence over authenticity.

Douglas, D. (2000) Assessing Language for Specific Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fulcher, G. and Davidson, F. (2007) Language Testing and Assessment. London: Routledge.

These two books were useful for delving deeper into testing to udnerstand the philosophy and some of the statistical approaches.

Hughes, A. 2nd ed. (2003) Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This is a fairly accesible read.

Spratt, M. (2005) Washback and the classroom: the implications for teaching and learning of studies of washback from exams. Language Teaching Research, 9/1, pages 5–9.

This is a really important paper which reviews studies on the impact of tests on classroom teaching. The main finding was that there is no need to 'teach to the test' as it does not improve performance in the long term. Tests should be integrated into the Bigger Picture of the course aims.

Upshur, J. A. and Turner, C. E. (1995) Constructing rating scales for second language tests. ELT Journal, 49/1, pages 3–12.

Don't be put off by the title - this one is a little gem which shows a really accessible way of creating assessment scales for classroom tests. It uses a system of binary choices that the teacher works out beforehand. I used it to createscales to assess note-taking, which is really ahrd to assess and it has proved successful for that.

Olwyn

Hi Olwyn,

this is grand! Thanks for sharing!

Silvia

Dear Olwyn

I want to thank you,too.This bibliography is great,it will help me  widen my knowledge and worldview of Testing.By the way I don't think that "teach to the test is a good idea",and I 'm really convinced that this practice doesn't improve student performance ,but don't you think that they should be familiarized with the different kinds of  test formats and items.Where do you set the boundaries?

Best Regards

Marcela-V