Tim McNamara and Carsten Roever’s “Language Testing: The Social Dimension” is the fifth volume in the Language Learning Monograph Series. The volumes in this series review recent findings and current theoretical positions, present new data and interpretations, and sketch interdisciplinary research programs. Volumes are authoritative statements by scholars who have led in the development of a particular line of interdisciplinary research and are intended to serve as a benchmark for interdisciplinary research in the years to come. The importance of broad interdisciplinary work in applied linguistics is clear in the present volume. McNamara and Roever survey the work that language testers have done to establish internal equity in assessment, and they describe the consequences of language testing in society as a whole and in the lives of individuals. Language is rooted in social life and nowhere is this more apparent than in the ways in which knowledge of language is assessed. Studying language tests and their effects involves understanding some of the central issues of the contemporary world.
Validity is an ominous word. The Oxford English Dictionary assigns it several meanings, deriving from Latin origins of 'powerful, effective': 'possessing legal authority or force', 'technically perfect or efficacious', as well as 'sound and to the point; against which no objections can fairly be brought'. These senses are all relevant to current uses of the term validity in language testing. But as the chapters in the present volume make clear, various practices, modes of argumentation, sources of information, and complex conceptual issues exist for establishing the validity of language testing instruments, procedures, and their uses in educational settings. Moreover, many valuable analytic approaches and theoretical considerations have only recently been explored, applying innovative measurement techniques, corresponding to the complex nature of language proficiency itself, and accounting for the diverse purposes for which languages are learned as well as settings in which languages are used.
A wry and engaging look at trite, trendy, grammatically incorrect, inane, outdated, and lazy uses of words, phrases, and expressions. By turns gleefully precise and happily contrarian, this is a highly opinionated guide to better communication. In Literally, the Best Language Book Ever, author Paul Yeager attacks with a linguistic scalpel the illogical expressions and misappropriated meanings that are so commonplace and annoying in everyday conversation. Identifying hundreds of common language miscues, Yeager provides an astute look at the world of words and how we abuse them every day. For the grammar snobs looking for any port in a storm of subpar syntax, or the self-confessed rubes seeking a helping hand, this witty guide can transform even the least literate into the epitome of eloquence.
Product Description Language Change, examines the way external factors have influenced and are influencing language change, focusing on how changing social contexts are reflected in language use.
Product Description The two paradigms which have dominated the field of linguistics in the twentieth century--those of Saussure and Chomsky--have both left aside the subject of language change as an unsolvable mystery which defied theoretical mastery entirely. Rudi Keller, in On Language Change, reassesses language change and places it firmly back on the linguistics agenda. Drawing from ideas of eighteenth-century thinkers such as Mandeville, Smith and Menger, he demonstrates that language change can indeed be explained through the workings of an ``invisible hand.''
