Both English language and English education is changing greatly in 21st century. How do you see the tendency of English assessment based on the changing of English language and English education? Does the new test Aptis represent the tendency?

Barry: A couple of years ago, I edited a book called theories and practices, which is designed to look at current trends in language testing and the underlying themes were localization, fragmentation and professionalization. Probably about 15 years ago, people began to understand that the big international test is very important, because if you need a test to get from here to the UK to study, you must have a big international test and get something recognized as a passport. But if you are creating a test within China to use only within your own country, you don’t need a passport. You need something different. So the testing world began to fragment, and you began to find all of these different tests growing everywhere. But at the same time, countries like China were sending people abroad to study language assessment, so the local professionalism began to spread from outside UK and USA, the traditional two main centers for English test development. Then you began to get all of these people coming out of these countries and going back home with a lot of developing experiences in assessment. Another key issue is localization, for if you don’t have the people to make the test, you will never make a good test. And the localization began to form our understanding of the importance of the individuals in the testing system. The Aptis system was developed with all of those areas in mind. I went to British Council and they also thought it was a really nice idea. I would say that Aptis is the only test right now that has been built with those ideas.

Aptis is based on the socio-cognitive framework. Could you please give more details about this framework?

Barry: The socio-cognitive framework is a framework for developing a test. Also it provides the model for the kind of information you need to gather and to validate the use of a test. It’s called the socio-cognitive model because it takes the two approaches to language. We don’t develop the model ourselves. We look at what is most practically useful model of language. We turned to the models of language to help us understand how people progress, for example, through reading. We developed our model with the idea that you begin with the phonemes when you read, and you eventually move on to a sentence, a paragraph, a short text, a longer text and so on. As you are progressing in your reading, you can do all of those things. We understand the importance of cognition in language, and at the same time we understand that language is a social institute. So when we are sitting here and talking to each other, it’s a social interaction. The cognition is still happening. The cognition and social interaction together affect the difficulty of the task. That’s what I call the socio-cognitive model.

British Council has made important contributions to both English education and English assessment around the world. Would you please introduce the English language assessment history of BC?

Barry: We know our history goes back to 1941 for sure. I suggested to British Council about a year and a half ago that we should look at our own history in assessment and see what we can learn from what we have done ourselves. We actually got funding and started the British Council Assessment History Project. We’ve already begun to find some really interesting things, such as in 1941 we signed an agreement to offer Cambridge examinations the expertise to develop a new test. Probably the most interesting thing coming out in the project is the fact that it seems very conclusive now that the whole area of English for specific purposes and English for academic purposes in particular originated from the British Council. Even when the test development is going to death in the 1990s, British Council is also very much involved in the peacekeeping English project with NATO, for example, creating both training and developing and delivering assessment English project. So far we have not been able to c