ABSTRACT
Standards serve to outline expectations and to encourage consistency. Humans have created and utilized standards of various sorts throughout history. For example, cultures have standard calendars, countries have standards for railroad track gauges, screws and bolts have standard thread depth and pitch, appliances have standard electrical requirements, and schools have standards for language learning outcomes. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) sets international standards for such areas as mechanical and physical qualities of toys, natural gas cylinders, units of measurement, and language translation. Standards provide criteria against which to judge as well as descriptions of completeness and mechanisms for articulation. Language learning standards make content, goals, conditions, and expected outcomes of lan-
guage learners explicit to all potential stakeholders. A primary expectation in establishing standards is that explicit standards can promote cohesion among instruction, curriculum design, and assessment. As will be noted, however, language learning standards do not have, indeed cannot have, the precision of the ISO standards linked to the physical world. Indeed, one of the most problematic facets of language ability standards is the lack of precision in linking relatively abstract definitions to test scores.
