Professor John A. Hawkins
Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Davis

Prof. Hawkins’ paper: Using Learner Language from Corpora to Profile Levels of Proficiency (CEFR) - Insights from the English Profile Project, posed the question: how much of the grammar, lexicon and usage conventions of English do learners actually know at each of the CEFR levels? 

He reported on collaborative work based on an empirical examination of the Cambridge Learner Corpus, which showed how greater precision in understanding and describing learner’s knowledge at the different levels can be achieved through the use of electronic corpora.

Enhanced accessibility of items through part-of-speech tagging and parsing, allows searches to be conducted that go beyond individual words. Even more significantly, the tagged and parsed learner corpus enables what learners can actually do grammatically and lexically, in addition to what they cannot do (i.e. errors) to be measured.

Prof Hawkins said once criterial features and transfer effects had been identified at the different proficiency levels they could be incorporated into a core curriculum and a reference document for English that would be useful for teaching and testing purposes:  “This work provides the content for "foreign market-specific" publishing of English teaching materials targeting e.g. China and the Spanish-speaking world and highlighting grammatical and lexical problems and capabilities that are characteristic of these different groups of learners.

Professor Micheline Chalhoub-Deville
Professor, Department of Educational Research Methodology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Educational reform is primarily an expression of concern with how well schools are functioning and with the quality of educational outcomes and/or student learning.  This concern is expressed in many countries around the world.

The most recent educational reform effort in the USA is represented in the No Child Left Behind Act, (NCLB). This public law, targets the testing of all English language learners (ELLs). The federal government is mandating state-wide standards and assessments tied to a system of rewards and corrective measures. Developers of the NCLB Title III ELL language tests have had to consider in their test specifications information from the variety of professional and state subject area standards as well as English as a second language (ESL) standards. 

Professor Chalhoub-Deville provided a critical analysis of educational reform initiatives in U.S. schools, showing the shift in federal policies to increasingly hold educators and schools accountable, focusing on policies addressing the testing of ELLs. 

Professor Chalhoub-Deville asserted that while testing and accountability seem to be the most expedient approach used by the federal government and politicians to show the electorate their commitment to education, past experience indicates that test-driven educational reform has repeatedly fallen short in delivering the desired educational change. 

Professor Tim McNamara
Professor of Applied Linguistics at The University of Melbourne,

Professor Tim McNamara was sadly unable to present his paper, Recognizing the Other: Language Assessment, Immigration and Citizenship. However, Professor Elana Shohamy of Tel Aviv University had offered to step into the breach and present the paper for him.

His paper explored how the construct of language proficiency in the context of tests for immigration and citizenship is best understood in terms of ideology, not functional language proficiency. 

Both the nature of the test construct, and the uses to which the test is to be put, are not determined by the test developers, but are entirely externally determined as a function of policy and political processes. 

Prof. McNamara indicated that this was a dilemma  facing test constructors and his paper ended with an appeal for the language testing community to rise to this challenge: “Language testers, our work is too important and interesting for us to be just technicians; we need first and foremost to be thinkers.” 

Dr Brian North
Head of Academic Development at Eurocentres, the Swiss-based language school foundation

Dr Brian North’s paper, The Educational and Social Impact of the CEFR in Europe and Beyond, examined the effect that the CEFR and the “toolkit” established around it has had on the discussion of levels and on the reporting of language learning outcomes in Europe and beyond, particularly with regard to examination results.

Dr North outlined the influence that the CEFR philosophy, its levels and “Can-Do” descriptors are having on curriculum and examination design and reform, and on syllabus development. Finally, he looked at the social impact of the CEFR in terms of  European academic integration, the development of European citizenship and the promotion of plurilingualism.

He concluded that the CEFR as a common framework is a social construct – a constructed consensus, rather than a revealed truth, and that as such it was likely to adapt in order to reflect changing shared perceptions of proficiency. The purpose of the CEFR is to encourage reflection not to shut down debate.

Dr Lynda Taylor
Consultant, University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations

The global spread of English led to the emergence of regionally-based varieties, e.g. British, American, Australian English; more recently, so-called ‘new Englishes’ have started to emerge. Other widely spoken European languages have experienced a similar phenomenon, if not on such a grand scale. The existence of established and emerging linguistic varieties around the world provokes debate at regional, national, and even international level about how closely a particular ‘localised’ variety does - or does not - align with an accepted, or ‘acceptable’, standard.

For decision-makers in language education, linguistic variation raises both theoretical and practical issues about what to teach – in relation to pedagogy, materials and training, and what to test – in terms of the standards, norms, models and judgement criteria we adopt. Decisions may be further influenced by socio-political sensitivities, even prejudices, about whose language should be the focus of attention, as well as by the ever increasing pace of language change

Dr Taylor argued that language standards, like most other standards, are socially and culturally determined, designed to serve the community where they are developed and to meet a specific set of needs, and pointed to parallels with the standardisation of time and the creation of artificial time ‘zones’ enabling time to be both standardised, but relevant to each local community. She suggested that when setting language standards for teaching and assessment, language testers need to seek to achieve a balance of interdependence and complementary differentiation.  

Professor James E. Purpura
Associate Professor of Linguistics and Education in the TESOL and Applied Linguistics Programs at Teachers College, Columbia University

Professor Purpura’s presentation, The Impact of Language Assessment on the Individual, examined the issue of washback. While it is widely understood that the use of language assessments for decision-making has the potential for significant impact on individuals and groups, it can also affect the processes and practices they engage in, such as learning and teaching.

Furthermore, given the range of decisions that could be made based on score interpretations, the introduction and use of assessments can have significant attitudinal, behavioural and developmental consequences for stakeholders in a wide range of contexts.

While researchers have recently begun to examine issues of test impact concerning the wider socio-political level, research on impact has mainly focused on the effects of language assessment on teaching and learning referred to as ‘washback’.

Professor Purpura concluded that studies into washback showed that exams can potentially affect the content of teaching and related materials, but are ineffectual in effecting changes in other aspects of teaching. The full range and extent of the effect of washback has yet to be established: few studies have investigated the exam effects on increased performance, and no studies have examined either changes in teacher cognition or the evidentiary links between the provision of test feedback and the developmental processes in both large-scale and classroom contexts.

Keynote Speeches

As well as the six plenary presentations, ALTE 2008 also featured a total of 13 keynote speeches.

Marguerite Kuzma of the European Commission’s Directorate for General Education and Culture gave a presentation L’Indicateur Européen des Competénces Linguistiques et son contexes, outlining plans for the implementation of the European Survey of Languages Competences and how that will measure progress towards the objectives of the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs. Other highlights included Cyril Weir’s paper Developing equivalent forms in reading examinations: construct, construct, construct; David Graddol’s Future demographics of English Language Learners and David Little’s presentation: The European Language Portfolio and adult migrants: an alternative approach to teaching and assessment