Language Teaching Research Quarterly

The discussion in this article is organized in three parts. In the first part we acknowledge the significant contributions made by Carol Chapelle to the development of the argument-based approach to validation in English Language testing. The move away from a focus on the test itself (construct and content) to the use of test scores for validation purposes has been a significant conceptual shift. In the second part we suggest that productive operationalization of the argument-based approach rests on a stable and profession-wide taken-for-granted construct with specifiable and scalable features. Until recently the widely accepted construct of proficiency in internationalized English Language testing has been associated with the concept of communicative competence. However, this concept has been complexified by research in contingency in interactional language use and flexible multilingualism, some of which have been encapsulated in the expanded notion of language proficiency in the 2020 iteration of the CEFR Companion Volume. Language proficiency in this emergent dispensation embodies contingent, non-scalable and non-prescribable language use. Some of the questions and issues for test validation, including the argument-based approach, arising from this destabilization are discussed in the final section.