The Writings of Lyle F. Bachman: Assuring That What We Count Counts in Language Assessment

As one of the most recognized names in the fields of language assessment and applied linguistics, Lyle F. Bachman has published extensively and contributed a very high volume of journal articles, books, and conference presentations to the field. These writings have strongly influenced the discipline and over the last three decades have played a hand in shaping the field into what we know today. Until now, Bachman’s work has been spread across various mediums and not existed in one place. The Writings of Lyle F. Bachman is the first book to pull together Bachman’s work into a single, comprehensive volume.

The text is split into eight major sections, with each section beginning with an introduction by the editors to provide contextualization, and ending with a set of thought provoking discussion questions. Sections cover some of the major areas of the field, including Validation, Test Methods Facets, Program Design and Evaluation, and Language Testing as related to Second Language Acquisition, and papers within each section are presented chronologically so that the evolution of Bachman’s ideas and research insights can be clearly traced. Due to Bachman’s strong impact in the field, this volume not only presents a collection of his writings, but rather an overview of the discipline as it stands today that the Editors have put in a context that will be useful to both researchers and graduate students in the areas of Language Assessment & Testing and Applied Linguistics.