Language demonstrates structure while also showing considerable variation at all levels: languages differ from one another while still being shaped by the same principles; utterances within a language differ from one another while exhibiting the same structural patterns; languages change over time, but in fairly regular ways. This book focuses on the dynamic processes that create languages and give them their structure and variance.
Assessment is helpful in charting student growth and evolution. It provides a constant source of feedback to the learners, enabling them to demonstrate what they have absorbed. The book explains the difference between authentic assessment and performance assessment and describes how typical tests differ from the techniques of assessment. Included in the coverage are many resources on the topic in books, articles, videos, and on the Internet.
It is not the purpose of this volume to propose solutions but rather to explore some of the methods of recognizing and analysing the problem; only if this difficult first step of agreeing on the dimensions of the problem is carried out successfully can there be any chance of finding acceptable and workable solutions. The writers of this volume do not have a single view of the issues, for they are international in background and experience, and interdisciplinary in training and approach; moreover, as will be clear, they differ in political and philosophical beliefs, in scholarly rhetoric, in research paradigms and in personal circumstances.
