Book Review: Experimenting with uncertainty: essays in honour of Alan Davies

Abstract

Reviews the book, Experimenting with uncertainty: Essays in honour of Alan Davies by C. Elder, A. Brown, E. Grove, N. Iwashita, K. Hill, T. Lumley, T. McNamara, and K. O'Loughlin (2001). Experimenting with uncertainty: essays in honour of Alan Davies is a Festschrift of 28 articles by researchers in language testing or other broadly defined areas of applied linguistics. This volume reflects the current state of the field of language testing, where language testing could be in the immediate future, how the field could get there, and how to implement language testing as social practice and as a tool for second language acquisition (SLA) research. Within a framework that addresses matters of concern to Davies throughout his career, the papers in each section look forward to the future by considering issues of construct operationalization, the judgments that language testing specialists need to make to cope with both test use and social impact, and how language testing and SLA can be integrated to address recalcitrant questions in both fields. In the pursuit of what Davies calls language testing's 'necessary aim of explicitness', he urges a deliberate operationalization of these uncertainties, i.e., a careful manipulation and a prudent analysis of features of language that we are interested in testing. Experimenting with uncertainty: essays in honour of Alan Davies fulfills its purpose of Festschrift through an issues-based topical discussion of what Davies has regarded as the very essence of the field of language testing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)