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one which Shohamy (2001) has noted in the past as testament to the power of tests.
More papers from a bottom-up perspective (cf. Busch in Hogan-Brun et al.) would also
be appreciated and not only from a research standpoint perhaps a closer look at
multilingualism and multiculturalism in practice, free of the top-down, repressive
rhetoric, might reveal a way ahead.

Reference
Shohamy, E. (2001). The power of tests: A critical perspective of the use of language tests.
Singapore: Longman.

G. Fulcher (2010).
Practical language testing. London: Hodder Education. 304 pp.
ISBN: 9780340984482, 19.99 (pbk)

Reviewed by: John Read, University of Auckland, New Zealand

DOI: 10.1177/0265532210394641

We are currently seeing a minor flurry of new texts on language testing and assessment,
including two from the same publisher, and this means it is timely for those of us who
teach courses on the subject to consider whether to adopt one of the new volumes in
preference to our current set text. The focus of this review is Glenn Fulchers new book,
which is described in the back-cover blurb as the ideal introduction for students of
Applied Linguistics, TESOL and Modern Foreign Language teaching as well as for prac-
tising language teachers who are required to design or implement language tests.
First, let me say that I enjoyed reading this book and found it very stimulating. It has
a wealth of interesting ideas from a whole range of sources within the language testing
literature and beyond. It reflects current thinking about the nature of language assess-
ment and engages with the problem areas that we all have to grapple with. In addition, it
is a highly literate volume in which the author draws unapologetically on his interests in
philosophy, history and ideology, as well as architecture and engineering, to elucidate the
larger context in which language tests operate and to discuss enduring issues in the field,
all in an accessible style of writing.
The historical perspective owes a debt to Spolskys (1995) pioneering work but
Fulcher has obviously explored the history of the field for himself more than just super-
ficially. Thus, we learn a lot more than most of us probably knew before about the US
Army tests of World War I and their role in launching the psychometric revolution in
American education. We are presented with early evidence of test specifications for a
picture description task from two books published by Cyril Burt in the early 1920s.
Fulcher also offers a fresh reading of Robert Lados work which is ripe for rediscovery
as we reach the fiftieth anniversary of his first book on language testing in his discus-
sion of Lados model of language use, exploring the interaction of language form and
meaning with cultural and personal meanings. Although the frequent reference to histori-
cal sources may seem a little self-indulgent at times, the author always relates the discus-
sion to contemporary issues in testing and this adds to the depth of the analysis.

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With regard to its overall structure, the book begins with three chapters that lay the
groundwork by discussing the role of testing within society and the education system,
and then introduce the twin paradigms of standardized testing and classroom assessment.
The subsequent six chapters follow the test design cycle, from test purpose, through
construct definition, specification writing, and field testing to inferences and decisions,
with the other steps in between. The concluding chapter focuses on the impact of lan-
guage tests in classrooms.
Chapters 2 and 3 deal respectively with Standardised Testing and Classroom
Assessment. This suggests a commendable intention to present the two approaches in a
balanced way something that is difficult to achieve in practice, whether it be in a text-
book or a course. At my former institution, we solved the problem after a fashion by
offering separate graduate courses in testing and in assessment, each focusing on one of
the paradigms. However, in this book the decision to organize almost all of the following
chapters in terms of the test design cycle inevitably means that the balance is tipped in
favour of more formal, larger-scale testing, with classroom procedures receiving much
less attention. In fact, Fulcher asserts that [l]arge-scale standardised testing is the most
prevalent form (p. 93). In Chapter 5, after presenting models of the kind of elaborate test
specifications that are certainly necessary for large high-stakes testing programmes, the
author includes a brief discussion of how, following a suggestion by Popham, specifica-
tions can be boiled down to meet the objections of teachers that the full version is too
complex and indeed to address their assessment needs at the school level more appro-
priately (pp. 147148). Similarly, the final chapter in the book, Testing and Teaching,
is primarily concerned with the influence of external tests in the classroom, with its dis-
cussion of washback, test preparation, and state-mandated content standards in the USA.
Thus, despite an affirmation right at the end of Chapter 10 that assessment by teachers
represents a gold standard (pp. 295297), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that
classroom assessment is being treated as the poor relation in this volume. It is very much
a book about formal tests rather than other forms of assessment, like portfolios or self-
assessment or formative classroom tasks.
In the chapters that cover the test design cycle, the various stages in the process are
illustrated by extended examples from particular testing projects, such as the test speci-
fications for a reading test for migrant workers, and the domain analysis for an assess-
ment task to be administered to Korean learners studying English for tourism, both in
Chapter 5. The Korean project is later used in Chapter 6 to explain how prototyping of
tasks is undertaken. Also in Chapter 6 there is an edited transcript of the discussion at an
actual test specification workshop, where the participants were working on the develop-
ment of a listening task for a computer-based placement test. The recorded discussion
involved a review by one group of participants of a draft item produced by another
group, and it is a revealing account of how the evaluation group progressively discovered
multiple problems with the item that had not occurred to the original design group.
Chapters 7 (Scoring Language Tests) and 9 (Test Administration) are full of dis-
cussion and advice on the many practical issues involved in putting language tests into
operational use, especially when they are being used to make high-stakes decisions. For
example, Chapter 9 covers the rationale for strict test administration procedures in terms
of fairness and protecting score meaning; their importance as a ritual; the need to

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accommodate test-takers with disabilities; the enduring incidence of attempts to cheat;

the value of efficient data-handling procedures and moderation; and finally the
unavoidable expense of it all if testing is to be done properly. The topics of these two
chapters might seem out of order in the cycle, except that of course scoring procedures
need to be determined before a test is administered. Inserted between the two chapters is
one on Aligning Tests to Standards, in which the author returns to the more critical
perspective found in the early chapters of the book, with a particular focus on the
Common European Framework, among other examples.
A strong feature of the book is the Activities section at the end of each chapter. Many
of these are not just token questions of the Think about a reading test you are familiar
with ... variety, but really well-conceived tasks based on interesting stimulus material
that encourage readers to explore further and apply the ideas presented in the chapter.
The sources include newspaper articles about the social consequences of testing; tran-
scripts of interactional discourse between learners; actual tasks from a variety of tests;
sets of faulty test items for review; and numerous websites.
Reflecting on the usability of the volume as a textbook, I would be more confident
about using it with serious-minded masters and doctoral degree students, especially
ones who have already done an introductory course on testing and assessment. I can
also see it meeting the needs of experienced teachers with a background in item writing
and test administration who are looking to deepen their knowledge and understanding
of best practice in language testing. From this perspective, the word practical in the
book title is a little misleading, as is the claim in the blurb that it is intensely practical.
It is true that this is a book which is grounded in language testing practice and addresses
the real issues that we face in designing and developing good quality tests. But it is not
a practical handbook for teachers in the same sense as, say, Hughes (2003) or Brown
and Abeywickrama (2010), with their multiple examples of item types and formats and
their comparatively lite treatment of the theory. Fulchers book is also presumably
intended to complement the other new book from Hodder Education by Douglas (2010),
which is rather more introductory and folksy in nature (see Davidson, 2010, for a
review). In fact, I have toyed with the idea that the commissioning editor mixed up the
two titles and Fulchers book is the one that was supposed to be called Understanding
Language Testing. It has certainly enriched my own understanding of the subject and I
am sure it will do the same for many other readers who are receptive to the authors
scholarly approach.

References
Brown, H.D., & Abeywickrama, P. (2010). Language assessment: Principles and classroom prac-
tices (2nd ed.). New York: Pearson Longman.
Davidson, F. (2010). Review of D. Douglas, Understanding language testing. Language Testing,
27(4), 627629.
Douglas, D. (2010). Understanding language testing. London: Hodder Education.
Hughes, A. (2003). Testing for language teachers (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Spolsky, B. (1995). Measured words: The development of objective language testing. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

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