Abstract
Language tests from the distant past to the present are important historical documents. They can help inform us about attitudes to language, language testing and language teaching when little alternative evidence of what went on in the bygone language classroom remains. Seeing where we have come from also helps us better understand where we are today. The Cambridge ESOL Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE) has by far the longest track record of any serious EFL examination still in existence, so it is a particularly useful vehicle for researching where we have come from in European approaches to language teaching and testing over the last century. We will trace some significant events in its history to exemplify the developments in the field during that period (see Weir 2003 for a full history of the CPE).
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Further reading
Spolsky (1995) is an impressive, scholarly history of the development of ESOL examinations in the USA and Britain, if somewhat predisposed to the psychometric orientation of the former.
Weir and Milanovic (eds.) (2003) gives a full history of the development over a century of a major international ESOL examination the CPE looked at from a British perspective with its humanistic/sociolinguistic leanings.
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© 2005 Cyril J. Weir
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Weir, C.J. (2005). Language Testing Past and Present. In: Language Testing and Validation. Research and Practice in Applied Linguistics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514577_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514577_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-1189-6
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