ABSTRACT
Charles Alderson and other members of the Lancaster Language Testing Research Group played an important role in investigating and bringing to light the state of the art of aviation language testing. Test development in response to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) language proficiency requirements (LPR) is a challenging endeavour. Given the high stakes nature of aviation language testing for licensing and air safety, the challenges faced by civil aviation authorities in selecting appropriate tests, and the difficulty in ascertaining the quality of some of the aviation language tests available, was of concern to ICAO. Another challenge in the development of aviation language tests, or any language test for that matter, is the tension between context specificity and generalizability. The Versant Aviation English test is developed by Pearson and is an innovative although potentially controversial test in that it involves no human interaction and is delivered by phone or computer using semi-direct prompts.
