Oct.22,2010
On the morning of October 15th, Professor Lyle F. Bachman visited Zhejiang University and gave an excellent academic lecture at the invitation of the School of International Studies (SIS). Lyle F. Bachman, the professor of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is an expert on language testing. He used to be the president of the International Language Testing Association (ILTA) and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by ILTA. The lecture took place in the conference room (Room 201, East Block 5) of SIS. Professor He Lianzhen, the dean of SIS, hosted the lecture which attracted so many teachers and graduate students that every seat was occupied.
The topic of the lecture was “Justifying the Use of Language Assessment”. The main contents were based on Professor Bachman’s new book, Language Assessment in Practice, which was published this year. Professor Bachman started from the limits of previous work, and laid special emphasis on his latest theory in language testing named Assessment Use Argument (AUA). AUA is an innovation in the field of language testing, composed of a series of claims, data, warrants and backing. Professor Bachman made a thorough explanation of AUA by vivid examples. He believes that the starting point of test designing should be the beneficial consequences that the test should bring. The process of developing a language test should take full consideration of all the stakeholders of the test result and should collect reliable evidence to guarantee the justification of the test. It is also necessary to build conceptual frameworks for linking consequences, decisions and interpretations of the results. Professor Bachman repeatedly emphasized that the test and the society should not be separated. Besides a complete understanding of the conceptual framework and the data processing, the test designers and researchers should make effective communications with the decision-makers through the framework of AUA.
Referring to the application of the language test assessment, Professor Bachman made the obscure concept easier to understand. He explained why the language test is necessary and how to make it more reasonable, by illustrating examples and clarifying the conceptions. His intelligent and extraordinary lecture exerted a considerable and impressive influence upon the teachers and graduate students majoring in English teaching and Applied Linguistics. During the Q&A, Professor Bachman offered the most limpid and exhaustive answers to the questions about the application of AUA, the combination of AUA with the academic research, and the search for comprehensive and systematic evidence, etc. After the lecture, the audience took many photos with Professor Bachman as keepsakes, looking forward to further academic communications.
(Translated by YANG Liu)
