29.1665, Review: English; History of Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Sociolinguistics: Weir, O'Sullivan (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-1665. Wed Apr 18 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.1665, Review: English; History of Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Sociolinguistics: Weir, O'Sullivan (2017)

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Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2018 13:20:15
From: Joshua Paiz [jmp22 at nyu.edu]
Subject: Assessing English on the Global Stage

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-2995.html

AUTHOR: Cyril J. Weir
AUTHOR: Barry  O'Sullivan
TITLE: Assessing English on the Global Stage
SUBTITLE: The British Council and English Language Testing, 1941-2016
PUBLISHER: Equinox Publishing Ltd
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Joshua M Paiz, NYU Shanghai

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

‘Assessing English on the Global Stage,’ by Cyril J. Weir and Barry
O’Sullivan, offers a comprehensive overview of the rise and evolution of the
British Council (BC), focusing on its working creating, and consulting on,
major summative English language assessments. Considering the span of time,
the authors are examining, 75 years, this is a massive undertaking that has
been built on both access to an extensive archive of documents and on
interviews with still living individuals that have played important roles in
the growth and evolution of the BC’s testing arm. The result is a 337-page
tome that offers an exceptional level of detail. To help guide the reader
through this lengthy narrative (Weir & O’Sullivan, 2017, p. 40), they have
broken the book into three sections: the BC’s agenda of spreading British
influence around the world through facilitating English language learning; the
development of academic English tests; and the development of language tests
for ‘other’ purposes. This review will echo the organization of the original
text.  

In section one, Weir and O’Sullivan (2017) discuss the rise of the British
Council, linking it to the British government’s desire to acquire so-called
soft power, the new political and diplomatic currency of the mid-twentieth
century. At first, the acquisition of soft-power took the form of cultural
exchanges, such as travelling museum exhibits, but eventually a more
linguistic focus took over. The focus on language led to the ascendency of the
testing and assessment arm of the British Council and to the formation of
essential partnerships between the BC and major research universities in the
UK. These partnerships began forming in the 1960s, around the time of the
corporate turn in higher education (Nealon, 2012). Moreover, these
partnerships could be read as the BC playing a central role in the
corporatization of British higher education. This was achieved by establishing
new graduate programs in applied linguistics with the express purpose of
creating a class of academics with the theoretical knowledge to help construct
valid and reliable tests (p. 20). Many of these academics would go on to do
work for the BC in roles that would help the organization contribute to the
coffers of both itself and of its partner universities (pp. 42-44). Section
one closes out by discussing how the BC worked to train local specialists that
could then help them to construct tests that would be relevant to the needs of
local populations, helping them to capture more market share. It should be
noted that there was a tacit, if not overt, division of labor: BC consultants
would write the test items, determine their validity and reliability, while
the local specialists would speak to whether or not the constructed test was
appropriate to local needs and linguistically, culturally, and rhetorically
accessible to local populations. 

In Section Two, the conversation shifts to the role of BC assessments as
gatekeeping tools. That is, it focuses largely BC-led development and
management of assessments that would determine which foreign students were
adequately prepared to study, at least linguistically, at British
universities. Weir and O’Sullivan (2017) begin by discussing how a shift in
wartime priorities for the British Home Office eventually led to a shift in
the BC’s focus, from being a cultural exporter to Europe, to be a language
education and assessment exporter to more distant parts of the globe (p.
107-110). They identified the driving force behind this shift as the desire
to, “seize the great opportunities available in Asia and Africa (p. 109)”.
Section two continues by examining the creation of the first assessment geared
at providing a measure of communicative ability. In the 1980’s the English
Language Testing System (ELTS) was developed in response to the spreading
acceptance of the communicative approach in English language teaching (p.
139). The development of ELTS was spearheaded by researchers who developed
communication profiles to inform test design. They then created a test that
could be tailored to the needs of the individual test taker—whether it be
career development, entrance into an English-medium university, etc. However,
the numbers of candidates that signed up for the new exam remained low through
the 1980s (p.172). This led to a large-scale evaluation that highlighted
issues with the practicality and validity of the ELTS exam. Based on the poor
numbers, the BC began to question the exam’s ability to serve as a predictor
of communicative ability and likely academic success at British universities.
This led to the eventual development of the International English Language
Testing System (IELTS). The authors spend the last chapter outlining the
development of the IELTS exam and that key role the strategic partners, e.g.,
Australia’s International Development Program (IDP) and Cambridge University,
played in developing the test and helping it to gain global relevance. 

The final section focuses on current shifts in BC assessment activities and a
view of possible futures for the BC and their assessments. Weir & O’Sullivan
(2017) begin by examining a considerable paradigm shift for the BC that
occurred in the early years of the twenty-first century. Specifically, they
identify how economic considerations made it prudent to switch from being a
service provider to being a product developer and consultant. That is, the BC
saw the need to shift away from managing the whole assessment process to
merely helping develop assessment tools for a variety of contexts and
purposes, allowing local organizations to take care of the actual service
component—a kin to a franchise model. This section then discusses the approach
used by the BC to develop localized assessments (i.e., the International
Language Assessment (p. 258) and the Aptis System (p. 278). In this section
the authors also provide ample examples of test questions and case studies to
show how global clients have responded to the new assessment systems. In the
future, Weir and O’Sullivan (2017) predict that the BC will continue in its
role as a developer of English language assessments globally. 

EVALUATION

If the only thing that you’re looking for is a straightforward, yet
excruciatingly detailed, history of British Council (BC) run testing
initiatives, look no further than Weir and O’Sullivan’s (2017) ‘Assessing
English on the Global Stage’. It offers an in-depth look at the history of the
Council’s efforts, even discussing, and apparently denouncing, the use of
“council propaganda” (Weir & O’Sullivan, 2017, pp. 29-32). Now, there are two
interesting things to note here, one of which I will discuss more fully later
in this review. First, this section is one of the few moments of apparent
criticism towards the target of inquiry—the BC and its global standardized
assessment activities. The second thing, is that their efforts to build a
history of BC activities is almost completely without a critical bent, or even
an acknowledgment that they will be uncritically approaching their topic. One
might argue that a history is just a record of fact. However, every history is
necessarily fraught—subject to the interpretive and narrative needs of the
teller. This, to me, creates a significant issue with the work presented here.
Failing to consider how BC assessment activities perpetuate the dominance of
center varieties of English, this book presents as relatively apolitical and
ideologically neutral that which is far from being so. 

This is particularly striking considering the number of opportunities that the
authors have to critically engage with their topic in just the first chapter.
For example, in the opening pages of chapter, they link the birth of the BC to
Britain’s desire for increased soft power—using cultural outputs to create
influence over other nations (Weir & O’Sullivan, 2017, pp. 4-5, see also
Taylor, 1981). Yet, this is presented as mere historical fact. The authors
fail to adequately reflect on this exigency that may illuminate the more
problematic sides of the BC’s agenda. They also point out that the BC had a
vested interest in maintaining and advancing certain standards of usage (p. 8)
and that this could help to maintain a hegemonic state for (British) English
(p. 11). However, besides a single reference to critical applied linguistics
through Alistair Pennycook (1994), they don’t dig any deeper. They regularly
pass up opportunities to engage with economic, ideological, and political
forces that could help to contextualize (and problematize) BC decisions. 

If you want a history of testing and assessment that will do more than provide
an uncritical data dump that largely serves to extend “[BC] propaganda”
(ibid), there are plenty of other histories out there (e.g., Lowenberg, 1993;
Spolsky, 1993; Taylor, 2006). These more critical histories will not only
provide a sufficient overview, but they will fuel your thoughts about how
testing and assessment serves to extend the Anglosphere’s dominance over
English language teaching and credentialing as well as who is or is not
recognized as legitimate speakers of English. For example, Lowenberg (1993)
discusses validity issues in global English language testing, highlighting the
need for standardized test makers to be aware of the difference between
linguistic deficiency on the one hand and linguistic variation and locally
relevant usage on the other. Making this move would validate the legitimacy of
expanding and outer circle Englishes. (Kachru & Nelson, 2006). Spolsky (1993)
offers an accessible and critical view of the history of English language
testing and assessment globally. He points specifically to growing competition
between British and American testing paradigms as they vied not only for
prestige and dominance but for revenue streams. By being critically aware, his
work opens the door to a concentrated critique of language testing and
assessment as an extension of (neo) colonial discourses of power and
exclusion. For a more recent treatment one can turn to Taylor (2006), who
extended Spolsky’s critical analysis by including the perspectives of language
learners, giving weight to their concerns about the impact and usefulness of
assessment tools created by Western agents. She ended by optimistically noting
that as new varieties of English (e.g., Indian English, Singaporean English,
etc.) rise in regional prominence, we may see a seismic shift in global
testing and assessment. The question may no longer be which organization’s
tests meet your needs (ETS vs. BC)? Rather, it will become which variety of
English meets your needs? So, again, if you’re looking for a considerable tome
that provides a straightforward history of BC testing and assessment, Weir and
O’Sullivan (2017) is a good candidate. If, however, you prefer to not only
acknowledge how problematic language testing and assessment is, but to engage
with it head on, there are better options available, as referenced above. 

REFERENCES

Kachru, Yamuna & Nelson, Cecil L. 2006. World Englishes in Asian contexts.
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Lowenberg, Peter H. 1993. Issues of validity in tests of English as a world
language: Whose standards?. World Englishes 12(1). 95-106. DOI:
10.1111/j.1467-971x.1993.tb00011x
 
Nelon, Jeffery T. 2012. Post-moderism: Or, the cultural politics of
just-in-time capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Pennycook, Alistair. 1994. The cultural politics of English as a foreign
language. Harlow, UK: Longman.

Spolsky, Bernard. 1993. Testing across cultures: An historical perspective.
World Englishes 12(1). 87-93. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-971x.1993.tb00010.x

Taylor, Lynda. 2006. The changing landscape of English: Implications for
language assessment. ELT Journal 60(1). DOI: 10.1093/elt/ccio81

Taylor, Philip M. 1981. The projection of Britain: British overseas publicity
and propaganda 1919-1939. London: Cambridge.

Weir, Cyril J., & O’Sullivan, Barry. 2017. Assessing English on the global
stage: The British Council and English language testing, 1941-2016. Sheffield,
UK: Equinox.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Joshua M. Paiz holds a doctorate in second language studies (TESOL) from
Purdue University. He is currently a lecturer in the writing program at New
York University, where he serves as an L2 writing specialist. His research
interests include LGBTQ+ issues in applied linguistics, Online Writing Labs as
L2 writing support tools, and sociocognitive approaches to SLA. His work has
appeared in outlets such as TESOL Journal, TESL-EJ, Asian EFL Journal, and the
Journal of Language and Sexuality. He also serves as a member of the review
boards of TESOL Journal, TESL-EJ, and the Asian EFL Journal.





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