Developing, Using, and Analyzing Rubrics in Language Assessment with Case Studies in Asian and Pacific Languages

by James Dean Brown (Editor)

Rubrics are essential tools for all language teachers in this age of communicative and task-based teaching and assessment-tools that allow us to efficiently communicate to our students what we are looking for in the productive language abilities of speaking and writing and then effectively assess those abilities when the time comes for grading students, giving them feedback, placing them into new courses, and so forth. This book provides a wide array of ideas, suggestions, and examples (mostly from M ori, Hawaiian, and Japanese language assessment projects) to help language educators effectively develop, use, revise, analyze, and report on rubric-based assessments.

216 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

James Dean Brown, Professor on the graduate faculty of the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, specializes in the areas of language testing, curriculum design, program evaluation, and research methods.

Professor Brown has taught extensively in France, the People's Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States (in California, Florida, and Hawaii). He has served on the editorial boards of the TESOL Quarterly, JALT Journal, and Language Testing as well as on the TOEFL Research Committee, TESOL Advisory Committee on Research, and the Executive Board of TESOL.

In addition to numerous book chapters and articles in TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Matters, Language Learning, Language Testing, Modern Language Journal, JALT Journal, The Language Teacher, System, and RELC Journal, Professor Brown has published a number of books, among them: Understanding Research in Second Language Learning: A teacher's guide to statistics and research design (Cambridge, 1988; also in a Chinese version, 2001, People’s Education Press); The Elements of Language Curriculum: A systematic approach to program development (Heinle & Heinle, 1995); Language Testing in Japan (with Yamashita, JALT, 1995); Testing in Language Programs (Prentice-Hall, 1996; also translated into Japanese in 1999 by Wada, Taishukan Shoten Publishers); New Ways of Classroom Assessment (TESOL, 1998); Using Surveys in Language Programs (Cambridge, 2001); and Criterion-Referenced Language Testing (with Hudson, Cambridge, 2002).