Barry O'Sullivan

BARRY O'SULLIVAN is Director of the Centre for Language Assessment Research at Roehampton University, UK. He has written two books, Issues in Business English Testing and Modelling Performance in Tests of Spoken Language and works with ministries, universities and examination boards around the world.

Language Testing: Theories and Practices offers a coherent overview of some of the key issues currently dominating the language testing profession. By bringing together a large group of authors from across the world who are actively engaged in language testing in different ways, from the practitioner to the academic, the book succeeds in highlighting a number of central ideas, the interpretation of which is to modern testing. These ideas (validation, localization, professionalization, reflexivity and politicization) are central to the chapters, which offer the reader an opportunity to see how language testers envisage the discipline developing in the coming years. The work included here will appeal to the expert and non-expert reader. The authors present their ideas and evidences in an informative yet accessible style and offer a unique glimpse of the broad range of interests, methodologies and concerns that define language testing.