ABSTRACT
Important tasks for applied linguistics are to develop more suitable and accurate ways of judging the level of attainment of learners, and of judging how successful teaching programmes and projects are. This chapter has reviewed developments in assessment. Assessment of proficiency and achievement has required the development of new types of test item, and more sophisticated ways of interpreting scores returned by the tests. Programme evaluation has taken developments in educational evaluation on board, which has led to a situation in which data on student success is one of the many factors in the complex judgement of how good a programme is. The reason for programme evaluation has been programme improvement and development, and indeed part of any quality audit consists of inspection and evaluation of the institution's built-in procedures for evaluation and development. The growing divergence between proficiency assessment and programme evaluation, and the decreasing role of the former in the latter, has been chronicled.
