University of California, Los Angeles

　　Advances in language testing in the past decade have occurred in three areas: (a) the development of a theoretical view that considers language ability to be multicomponential and recognizes the influence of the test method and test taker characteristics on test performance, (b) applications of more sophisticated measurement and statistical tools, and (c) the development of “communicative” language tests that incorporate principles of “communicative” language teaching. After reviewing these advances, this paper describes an interfactional model of language test performance that includes two components, language ability and test method. Language ability consists of language knowledge and metacognitive strategies, whereas test method includes characteristics of the environment, rubric, input, expected response, and relationship between input and expected response. Two aspects of authenticity are derived from this model. The situational authenticity of a given test task depends on the relationship between its test method characteristics and the features of a specific language use situation, while its interfactional authenticity pertains to the degree to which it invokes the test taker’s language ability. The application of this definition of authenticity to test development is discussed.

　　Since 1989, four papers reviewing the state of the art in the field of language testing have appeared (Alderson, 1991; Bachman, 1990a; Skehan, 1988, 1989, 1991). All four have argued that language testing has come of age as a discipline in its own right within applied linguistics and have presented substantial evidence, I believe, in support of this assertion. A common theme in all these articles is that the field of language testing has much to offer in terms of theoretical, methodological, and practical accomplishments to its sister disciplines in applied linguistics. Since these papers provide excellent critical surveys and discussions of the field of language testing, I will simply summarize some of the common themes in these reviews in Part 1 of this paper in order to whet the appetite of readers who may be interested in knowing what are the issues and problems of current interest to language testers. These articles are nontechnical and accessible to those who are not themselves language testing specialists. Furthermore, Skehan (1991) and Alderson (1991) appear in collections of papers from recent confer-ences that focus on current issues in language testing. These collections include a wide variety of topics of current interest within language testing, discussed from many perspectives, and thus constitute major contributions to the literature on language testing.