Reflect, Revisit, Reimagine: Language Assessment in ARAL

This 40th anniversary of ARAL also marks the 40-year anniversary of a significant uptick in research on language assessment, and hence there is much to reflect on and revisit within this period—and still scope for imagining the future. Pre-1980, language assessment had a long history, but Spolsky (1995) designated the late 1940s as a time of professionalization, which continued through the following decades. By the 1970s, language testers were gradually organizing into an academic community with an annual international conference, regional conferences, journals, and scholarly books. The new academic community not only developed and used language tests but also investigated the validity of their interpretations and uses. Canale's (1987) paper in ARAL provides an enduring frame of reference for reflection on the concerns of the academic community, which he introduced as the what, how, and why of language assessment.