It is these days a given that language tests have a social and a political dimension. Tests are frequently given with little or no educational value to decide immigration status and certify suitability for professional work (e.g for air traffic control). Yet, to what extent do language testers engage with the social and political nature of tests? McNamara (2014) feels there is a general conservatism in language testing. One example is testers’ acceptance of the administrative policy-friendly character of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) even when it is under attack from both pyscholinguistics (Hulstijn, 2007, 2011), and sociolinguists’ critique from those with interest in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). The ELF critique is particularly problematic for the CEFR as it questions the privilege of the native speaker in the level descriptions and the equivalence of ELF to other languages’s use implied in the CEFR (McNamara, 2014). The ELF critique suggests a need to reconceptualize the framework, a move that would be deeply unpopular with administrators and policymakers.
Questions of alignment to the CEFR clearly have sociopolitical implications but can and should language testers defy policy-makers and their insistence on alignment to CEFR? Does being a language tester imply a deeper engagement with sociopolitical issues like those illustrated in this post? The answer I think to both questions is yes. Technical competence and sociopolitical awareness taken together imply a need for a broader competence for the language tester than is commonly taught on language testing modules of postgraduate degree programmes. Testers need tools to understand sociopolitical issues more clearly and they need to engage with these issues if test use is to be a fair enterprise.
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