Serendipitous: Lessons and Insights into Language Assessment from Catherine Elder

ABSTRACT

The following interview was conducted with Catherine Elder in spring of 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. Cathie has had a varied career in language testing, including work at universities in Australia and New Zealand and at the Language Testing Resource Center in Melbourne. In this interview, Cathie shares some highlights of her somewhat serendipitous career as well as lessons she has learned along the way and insights into possible future directions for language assessment.

Selected publications

Elder, C., Knoch, H. & Harradine, O. (2019). Language requirements for Australian citizenship.Insights from a senate enquiry. In Roever, C. & G. Wigglesworth (Eds.), Social Perspectives onLanguage Testing: Papers in honour of Tim McNamara (pp. 73-88). Peter Lang.

Elder, C. McNamara, T. Kim, H., Pill, J. Sato, T. (2017). Interrogating the construct of communicativecompetence in language assessment contexts: What the non-language specialist can tell us. Language & Communication, 57, 14-21.

Elder, C. (2016). Exploring the limits of authenticity in language testing: the case of a specific purpose language test for health professionals. Language Testing, 33(2), 147-152.

Elder, C. & McNamara, T. (2016). The hunt for ‘indigenous criteria’ in assessing communication in the physiotherapy workplace. Language Testing, 33(2), 153-174.

Elder, C. (2016). Language assessment in higher education. In Shohamy, E. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Vol. 7 Language testing and assessment. Third Edition. Springer.

Elder, C. & Read, J. (2015). Post-entry language assessments in Australia. In Read, J. Assessing English Proficiency for University Study. Palgrave MacMillan.

Elder, C. Pill, J. Frost, K. & Bow, C. (2015). Marching out of step: the uneasy links between task-based competencies for military purposes and a general proficiency scale. In H. DeSilva Joyce and E. Thomson (Eds.), Language in uniform: Language and analysis and training for defence and policing purposes (pp. 223-240). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Kim, H. & Elder, C. (2015). Interrogating the construct of aviation English: Feedback from test takers in Korea. Language Testing, 32(2), 129-149.

Elder, C. (2014). Reflecting the diversity of learner achievements in first and additional languages: Towards context-specific language standards. In Spolsky, B. Inbar, O. and Tannenbaum, M. (Eds.), Challenges for language education and policy: Making space for people (pp. 52-64). New York, Routledge.

Elder, C. and Kim, S.H.O. (2013). Assessing teachers’ language proficiency. In A. J. Kunnan, (Ed.), The Companion to Language Assessment. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Elder, C., (2012). Bias in language testing. In C. Chapelle, (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Applied Linguistics. London: Blackwell.

Elder, C., Barber, M., Staples, M., Osborne, R. H., Clerehan, R. & Buchbinder, R. (2012). Assessing health literacy: a new domain for collaboration between language testers and health professionals. Language Assessment Quarterly, 9(3), 205-224.

Elder C. (2009). Implicit and explicit knowledge of an L2 and language proficiency. In R. Ellis et al., (Eds.), Implicit and explicit knowledge in second language learning, teaching and testing (Ch. 7). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Elder, C. (2009). Reconciling accountability and development needs in heritage language education: a challenge for the evaluation consultant. Language Teaching Research, 13(1), 15-34.

Elder, C & von Randow, J. (2008). Exploring the utility of a web-based English language screening tool. Language Assessment Quarterly, 5(3), 1-22.

Elder, C. & Davies, A. (2006). Assessing English as a Lingua Franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 26, 282-301.

Elder, C. & Iwashita, N. (2005). Planning for test performance. In R. Ellis, (Ed.). Planning and task performance in a second language (pp. 219-237). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Elder, C. (2005). Evaluating the effectiveness of heritage language education. What role for testing? International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, 8(2&3), 198-212.

Davies, A. & Elder, C. (Eds.). (2004). Handbook of applied linguistics. London: Blackwell.

Elder, C., Iwashita, N. & McNamara, T. (2002). Estimating the difficulty of oral proficiency tasks: what does the test-taker have to offer? Language Testing, 19(4), 347-368.

Elder C. (2001). Assessing the language proficiency of teachers: Are there any border controls? Language Testing, 18(1), 149-170.

Davies A., Brown, A., Elder, C., Hill, K., Lumley, T. & McNamara, T. (1999). Dictionary of Language Testing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Elder, C. (2000). Learner diversity and its implications for outcomes-based assessment. In Defining standards and monitoring progress in Languages other than English. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 23(2), 36-61.

Elder, C. (1997). What does test bias have to do with fairness? Language Testing, 14(3), 261-277.

Elder, C. (1996). The effect of language background on ‘foreign’ language test performance: the case of Chinese, Italian and Modern Greek. Language Learning, 46(2), 233–282.

Elder, C. (1993). How do subject specialists construe classroom language proficiency? Language Testing, 10(3), 235–254.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

R Roz Hirch

Catherine Elder is an honorary professor of Languages and Literature at University of Melbourne. Catherine came to language testing rather late and through a rather indirect route, as she describes in her interview, but has made up for it with her productivity and impact on the field of language assessment. Catherine began teaching at University of Auckland in 2000 before heading to Monash university in 2004 and University of Melbourne in 2006. At U Melbourne she was the director of the Language Testing Research Centre, which has engaged in a wide variety of government and industry projects related to language assessment in areas such as K-12 education, health, defence, aviation, and higher education.

Catherine has written articles and given presentations on topics including communicative competence in LSP, assessing English as a lingua franca, heritage language assessment, language requirements for citizenship, testing sociopragmatics, bias, and rater judgements, among other topics. Additionally, Catherine has served as president of ILTA, editor of Language Testing, and held numerous service posts in ILTA, ALTAANZ, and other language assessment societies. In 2020, Catherine Elder was honored with the Cambridge English Language Assessment / ILTA Distinguished Achievement Award.

This interview was conducted by Zoom in Spring, 2020, not long after Catherine received her ILTA award. In it, Catherine discusses how she “serendipitously” became involved in SLA and language assessment research, where her career has taken her, and some of the lessons she has learner along the way, as well as her thoughts on the future of the field.