–Discussing Washback at the UKALTA 2022 Language Testing Forum–

An important part of any person’s academic journey is identifying disciplines and sub-disciplines with which you feel most affinity. It seems something of an anomaly to think there are sometimes folks dedicating their entire working lives to contradicting or undermining others with whom they share the same campus – or even the same office.  As an educator, I know the disproportionate weight that language tests hold within the lives of many of my students, as both a graduation requirement at universities abroad and as a gate-keeping examination for those hoping to study in the UK. A pandemic, the advent of GPT-3, and sweeping industrial action within the education sector have created a perfect storm in this sector, and these tensions feel very present to me at this weekend’s Language Testing Forum. I still can’t quite place that feeling of outsiderdom as I steal out into the heavy rainfall of a dark November night: like a thief with his swag sneaking out of the secret policeman’s ball. Yet the connections and conversations initiated on Saturday night have stayed with me in the form of an unexpected flurry of emails  entering my mailbox. Perhaps I wasn’t such an outsider after all?

The conference is accessibly priced and impeccably organised. Even as a novice, I was also treated with respect by longtime experts in the field who offered entertaining anecdotes and advice. However, despite a moving series of talks in memory of  testing guru, Liz Hamp-Lyons, I’m unsure there was much genuine interest in addressing the social impact of language testing – and its latest multimodal turn. Hamp-Lyons herself wrote so convincingly about the concept of ‘washback’ – or the unintended effects of standardised testing  – describing them as “a form of social engineering that is at once beneficial and harmful.” Consequently, it seemed a little jarring to attend an event organised in memory of her where the term ‘ethics’ was rarely mentioned. 

Terms which did unexpectedly did appear in presentations and seemed to escape direct criticism included references to the mythical “native speaker”, “accent reduction”, and even a proposed metric of “nativelikeness” from a doctoral researcher at one of the UK’s leading universities. Is this really something so unsurprising? Am I just another sociolinguist snowflake?

The troubling truth behind these quiet and composed conversations between experts on the top floor of a Russell Group university building is this: Decisions made in this room will reverberate around the globe affecting the lives, languages and epistemes of millions for a number of decades. Students across Mexico continue to have their lives blighted (no exaggeration) by a troublesome test cooked up half a century ago by language testers in New York. It now seems somewhat perverse to discuss the statistics and algorithms that will determine their future without even a nod to the resulting intergenerational benefits and traumas of such decisions. 

Has there always been such a chasm between the lived experience of the examiner, the educator and the student? Why do exams continue to prove the common enemy for so many teachers and test-takers? I certainly came away from the conference in the knowledge that many language testers do advocate for ‘learning-oriented assessment’ and ‘language assessment literacy’. The quest for ‘nativelikeness’ is surely not a shared goal for all. 

Never, however, did I expect to be awarded a prize for best poster, the following day. Admittedly, I was one of only two students who ultimately presented a poster. Still – the accolade nevertheless confers a certain legitimacy to my research and critique of the status quo of language assessment. As one of my students recently remarked rather pointedly, we should never allow our sense of social capital to outweigh our sense of social justice. It seems nonetheless a relevant reflection that at every stage of life, awards can confer a transformative sense of external validation which reaffirms our sense of identity and belonging.

I do look forward to working further with others on developing language assessment – starting with students, trainee teachers, and colleagues; and above all, prioritising Global Majority voices. I also acknowledge that these voices are still lacking in the research. I sincerely hope that in the coming months and years I am able to find the means and methods to make this happen.