Language Assessment - Organizations

Organizations

The International Language Testing Association (ILTA) is one of the many organizations that organizes conferences, workshops, and a public forum for the discussion of important matters. ILTA's major annual conference is the Language Testing Research Colloquium. In 2008, the conference will be in Hangzhou, China, and in 2009 in Denver, Colorado. ILTA's Lifetime Achievement Award winners include: Carol Chapelle (USA), Alan Davies (UK), Lyle Bachman (USA), Bernard Spolsky (Israel), John Clark (USA), Charles Alderson (UK) and Elana Shohamy (Israel). Other well-known scholars who have not yet won the award include Kenji Ohtomo (Japan), Gui Sihuan (China), Merrill Swain (Canada), Tim McNamara (Australia), Dan Douglas (USA), Liz Hamp-Lyons (UK), and John Oller (USA).

Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey, the home of the TOEFL, offers an annual outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award in Second or Foreign Language and the University of Cambridge, UK, also offers an annual outstanding Masters Degree Award in second language testing. In Europe, there are two organizations: the Association of Language Testers of Europe (ALTE) and the European Association for Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA). All of these associations have developed Codes of Ethics and Practice that all language assessment professionals are expected to adhere to.