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PRACTICAL LANGUAGE TESTING. Glenn Fulcher.

London: Hodder Education, 2010. Pp. xvi + 352.

Article  in  Studies in Second Language Acquisition · December 2011

DOI: 10.1017/S027226311100043X

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 Book Notices 639

doi:10.1017/S027226311100043X
PRACTICAL LANGUAGE TESTING. Glenn Fulcher. London: Hodder
Education, 2010. Pp. xvi + 352.

Fulcher is highly successful in his presentation of foundational testing knowl-

edge within broader historical and social contexts. In fact, the continual embed-
ding of language testing practices within larger historical and social frameworks
is one of the real strengths of this volume as well as its coverage of the statis-
tical foundations of classical test theory, the history of large-scale testing, the
social uses and consequences of testing, and the relationship between testing
and assessment. The presentation and discussion of material within this volume
not only represents current trends in testing and assessment but also invites
both application and critique in a manner that will be of interest to a broad au-
dience including students, teachers, and seasoned language testers.
A hallmark of this volume, as well as of Fulcher’s other writing, is his effective
use of examples and analogies for instructive purposes. This skill—along with
the author’s ability and willingness to draw on a wide array of sources to get his
point across—results in a text that is both informative and readable even when
the more arcane aspects of testing and measurement are presented and dis-
cussed. For example, Fulcher’s use of Yerkes’s (1941) data describing score
distributions of subpopulations of enlisted army men is an effective and impres-
sive introduction to the technical characteristics of distributions and the normal
curve. The presentation of a transcript of an unbalanced dialogue between two
speakers—“Deciding What to Test”—is an excellent example of the difficulty of
defining and measuring interactional competence. The discussion of reverse
engineering, peppered throughout, reminds readers that arguments for validity
often involve a considerable amount of speculation and uncertainty. Fulcher’s
balance of the technical and interpretative illustrates the potential and the chal-
lenges of language testing.

REFERENCE

Yerkes, R. M. (1941). The role of psychology in the war. (Reprinted from The new world of
science, pp. 351–380, by R. M. Yerkes, 1920, New York: The Century Co.)

(Received 9 December 2010) April Ginther

Purdue University

doi:10.1017/S0272263111000441
TEACHING LANGUAGES ONLINE. Carla Meskill and Natasha Anthony.
Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2010. Pp. 199.

Language teaching is rapidly losing its resemblance to conventional classroom

instruction. From PowerPoint to YouTube, technology’s role in the classroom
has never been greater, to the extent that the need for a physical classroom has

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