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This paper reflects on the assessment of language ability, and evaluates the significance of developments in language test design in South Africa over the last three decades. In this environment the development of language assessment literacy (LAL) has been a piecemeal advance, prompted by private efforts. In their administration of large-scale international tests at primary and secondary school level, public education authorities have commissioned this private expertise to evaluate the quality of existing public examinations. In higher education, the learning about assessing language ability more professionally has been focussed on the testing of academic literacy. Several institutional, one inter-institutional initiative and one organisation intended for individual professionals have contributed to a sustained engagement with the assessment of language ability. Engagement, however, does not yet constitute demonstrable or wide national gains in competence to assess language ability. There is a serious lack of research on LAL despite this having secured the attention of language testers globally for more than two decades. The work done within the organisations mentioned shows how awareness may be converted into competence. Having achieved some gains in the latter, the investigations have also revealed significant gaps in expertise. There are still equally significant challenges to be met.

ltf.2026.13.01.pdf

Perspective Article

ltf.2026.13.01.xml

A Piecemeal Advance: Language Assessment Literacy in South Africa

Guest-editor: 
Hassan Mohebbi 
European Knowledge Development Institute, Turkey

Special Issue:  Language Assessment Literacy in the New Era: New Concerns, Same Solutions?

Our designs of language tests understandably focus on the endpoint: a useful test with interpretable results. We should not neglect what precedes that endpoint: the critical phases in the development of the test. We do not reflect enough on the development process, perhaps because we think that this is not worthy of research. Awareness of the stages of test design is useful, however: it pays handsome dividends when the quality of the end product is examined. The wide-ranging scholarly work of Carol Chapelle has focussed, among other issues, on two critically important components of testing language ability: assessing vocabulary knowledge and computer-assisted platforms for taking language tests. Their interaction will be highlighted here. Using a five-phase approach to language test design, this contribution sets out how the intuitive initial solution becomes the prompt to greater deliberation; how the articulated specification of what is being tested leads to greater theoretical defensibility; and how considerations of economy can be accommodated, leading to justifiable technical compromises in devising a quick test of reading levels. The initial solution associated reading ability closely with vocabulary knowledge only. The more deliberate subsequent design sought to overcome some of the limitations of that premise, by enriching the test with the addition of several further task types. The record of these design decisions indicates the rise in language assessment literacy (LAL) among the design team members, and how useful such a design record can be to enhance the quality of the eventual measure.

ltrq.2025.50.08.pdf

ltrq.2025.50.08.xml

Underestimated Utility: Recording Design Decisions in Language Test Development

Guest-editors: 
Christine Coombe 
Higher Colleges of Technology, Dubai, UAE 
Tony Clark 
Cambridge University Press & Assessment, UK 
Hassan Mohebbi 
European Knowledge Development Institute, Turkey


Special Issue: In Honour of Carol A. Chapelle’s Contributions to Language Assessment and Learning (Volume 50-First Part)

This contribution investigates gains in technical economy in measuring language ability by considering one recurrent interest of JD Brown: cloze tests. In the various versions of the Test of Academic Literacy Levels (TALL), its Sesotho and Afrikaans (Toets van Akademiese Geletterdheidsvlakke – TAG) counterparts, as well as related other tests used in South Africa, the test designers have used a modification of this procedure to very good effect. This paper reports on the steady evolution of its format over many years, how it is currently used, what its outstanding empirical properties are, and how the kind of technical economy it brings to the measurement of the ability to handle the demands of academic language at the level of tertiary education can be further applied. The modification involves the conventional, more or less systematic mutilation of a selected text, with two multiple choice questions about every gap in it: where the gap is, and which word has been omitted. We have not seen anywhere else analyses of this format, which in itself may be of interest to test designers. We proceed by defining technical economy, and then develop an argument on the basis of the empirical properties of TALL on how that idea can be applied, in particular to the design and task selection of such tests, before giving illustrations of how such choices may contribute to further and other productive and responsible designs and test formats.

ltrq.2023.37.07.pdf

Original Research 

ltrq.2023.37.07.xml

Achieving Technical Economy: A Modification of Cloze Procedure

Guest-editors: 
Christine Coombe, PhD, Higher Colleges of Technology, Dubai, UAE
Tony Clark, PhD, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, UK
Hassan Mohebbi, PhD, Independent Researcher, Turkey


Special Issue: In Honour of James Dean Brown’s Five-Decade Contribution to Language Testing