ABSTRACT
This chapter is a refl ection on certain activities of assessment of language learning and language teaching, dwelling on what is controversial and socially embedded about them. The assessments are particular instances, but are also indicative and representative of widespread tendencies. Assessment has become so embedded in our ways of thinking about formal language learning and teaching that the latter are barely conceivable without some version of the former. And what is wrong with assessment, it might be complained? How else can one be assured that something has been learned, a competence acquired, a standard met or maintained? Everyone agrees, in principle, that levels of achievement in language profi ciency need to be measured, and good practice recognized, low standards censured (even if friction arises from time to time as to whether censure/criticism is just “cultural insensitivity”).
