ABSTRACT
Pennycook claims, "English and English language teaching seems ubiquitous in the world, playing a role everywhere from large-scale global politics to the intricacies of people's lives". Inextricably coupled with language teaching, perennially it seems, is language assessment. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault depicted power as a force spread throughout society whose workings are not always implicit. Teachers and students are embedded in a "political field" shaped by the workings of individuals, corporations, and other organizations that in turn shapes the assessment practices in their classrooms. Political forces at different levels have long played a role in shaping classrooms and the experiences of second language writers within them. The existence of national policies to encourage or require the teaching of a particular language impacts the attitudes teachers and students bring to a particular writing task and assessment. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
