Understanding language assessment literacy: Developing language assessments

Language assessment literacy has become a critical competence for a language teacher to have. Accordingly, there are many studies in the literature which have researched different aspects of language assessment literacy (i.e., language assessment training, professional development and language assessment literacy levels of language teachers). However, they have not investigated how language teachers develop appropriate language assessment according to instructional purposes. Therefore, this study has aimed to reveal the development of language assessment by language teachers. The study was designed as a qualitative study and was carried out with eight participants working in a Turkish foundation university as English language instructors. Think-aloud protocols were used to collect data and the collected data were content-analyzed. The results of the study have indicated that developing language assessments has a critical, student- and course book-centered structure which helps to make exams valid in terms of content and construct validity. This structure also helps to have positive washback effects on students. Its limitations were explained and suggestions for further studies were made.