ABSTRACT
This chapter provides language assessments from the different contexts of civil service, literacy and immigration, and schooling. The most widely used context for language assessments has been the classroom arena. Teacher-made classroom language assessments in the U. S. have been in use for at least a century. Language teachers generally design, write, administer, and score assessments and assign grades to students. Northwest Evaluation Association's (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) program created a personalized assessment by adapting to each student's learning level so that students, parents, and teachers could have essential information about each student's abilities and what they were ready to learn—all within 24 hours. The MAP, developed by the NWEA, in Portland, Oregon, a not-for-profit organization founded by researchers and educators from school districts in the Pacific Northwest in the late 20th century, was to serve the role of formative assessment.
