ABSTRACT
Different constituencies and stakeholders such as immigrants, government bureaucrats, politicians, citizens, teachers, parents, industrialists, publishers, and examination makers all play a role in influencing language education and language assessment policy. The complex interaction of these different interests and worldviews produces tensions among the varying and often conflicting goals and interests. The goal of this chapter will be to provide a sketch of the focal points of these tensions in a number of current language assessment contexts, and a summary of issues that have recently been the thematic focus of colloquia and symposia at international conferences related to applied linguistics and language assessment.
