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Workplace language assessment poses special issues for language testers, but also, when it becomes very large scale, it poses issues for language policy. This article looks at these issues, focusing on the offshore and outsourcing (O&O) industry as it is transitioning from native-speaking (NS) countries into nonnative-speaking (NNS) destinations such as India and the Philippines. This is obviously most impacted in call centers, where the ability of customer service representatives (CSRs) to communicate with ease with their native-English speaking customers is central to business success and can be key to a nation's economy. Having reviewed the (limited) research in this area, we take the Philippines as our example to explore how government, academe, and the business sector are dealing with the language proficiency and personnel-training issues caused by the exponential growth in this industry. Appropriate language assessments that are practical, while also being valid and reliable, are critical if the Philippines is to retain its position in this emerging market. Currently, call centers in Philippines complain of very poor recruitment rates due to poor language ability, and of poor quality communication outcomes measures: But how do they assess these key areas? We describe and evaluate the current situation in call center language assessment in the Philippines and discuss possible ways forward, for the Philippines and for the O&O industry more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on research into the claim that widely used English language proficiency tests are unfair (unfair in the sense that a test favouring boys could be said to be unfair to girls). The global spread of English opens a major debate on the acceptability of competing norms, whether they should be exonormative or endonormative (Davies, 1999; Gill, 1999). An International English (IE) view insists that the only acceptable norms are those of native English speakers (NES). A strong World Englishes (WES) view maintains that to impose IE on users of WEs may be discriminatory against non-native English speakers (NNES). The theoretical and practical aspects of the issue come together in institutionalized English language proficiency testing. The paper reports on comparative definitions by expert local judges of the norms used in international (IELTS and TOEFL) and national (Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India, China) English language proficiency tests and considers in what ways the differing definitions have in practice influenced language test construction. It further reports on the findings so far with regard to three basic questions: 1. How possible is it to distinguish between an error and a token of a new type? 2. If we could establish bias, how much would it really matter? 3. Does an international English test privilege those with a metropolitan anglophone education? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response by Liz Hamp-Lyons about his article "Polemic Gone Astray: A Corrective to Recent Criticism of TOEFL Preparation." He explains that his purpose was not to attack the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the Educational Testing Service, rather, to direct critical attention toward unethical test preparation materials. He also asserted that his claims about the incapability of adult learners of self-guided learning were based on the research and not on an assumption.

Discusses methodological challenges in the rating of language compositions of nonnative English speakers. Portfolio-based writing assessments; Internal congruence within a student's essay; Holistic scoring system; Limitations of essay testing; Multiple trait assessment.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Process, Not Product: Less Than Meets the Eye," by Daniel M. Horowitz in the March 1986 issue.

In the Call for Papers for this anniversary volume of Assessing Writing, the Editors described the goal as "to trace the evolution of ideas, questions, and concerns that are key to our field, to explain their relevance in the present, and to look forward by exploring how these might be addressed in the future" and they asked me to contribute my thoughts. But by the time I arrived in the US, the voices of writing instructors and writing assessment practitioners were becoming louder, facilitated especially through the NCTE organisation Conference on College Composition and Communication and NCTE's College-focused journal, College Composition and Communication. The paper by Latif discusses a concept that has received little attention in writing research, and rarely if ever in writing assessment research, although from some perspectives it is discussed often in writing classrooms and among test developers: motivation. At that time I also argued that we must understand that all assessment is inherently political with implications not only for large bureaucracies but also for individual learners, teachers, parents and decision makers at every level within education. and that we need to understand that "what we do when we design or administer a writing test, when we score it, when we take and utilise test scores, is to participate in a form of social engineering that is at once beneficial and dangerous" (p13). [Extracted from the article]