Introducing Second Language Assessment

In Chapter 3, the author introduces the concepts of context, purpose, and impact. The chapter begins with a discussion of sociopolitical, cultural, and educational contextual influences on language assessments. The author uses well-known language assessment examples of these effects, including Norton and Stein’s Monkey Passage and how sociopolitical factors affected a group of Black African high school students when they took a reading assessment. The author uses Hall’s framework that considers people’s tendencies to act in certain ways depending on their cultural backgrounds and considers how these tendencies are important when designing and using an assessment for a particular purpose. The author also discusses levels of impact that an assessment can have on individuals, including its effect on test takers and their families, people who have a close relationship with test takers, and even people who do not have a close relationship with test takers.