Assessing Young Language Learners Penny McKay Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2006 Pp xi + 388 Ⅲ The tremendous interest in teaching additional languages to children has scarcely been matched by a corresponding level of activity in the assessment of younger learners The aim of this book is to link the latest thinking in applied linguistics, child psychology, and pedagogy to best practices in the assessment of children from to 12 years old As such, it will be welcomed by experienced teachers, program coordinators, and researchers into assessment and second language acquisition It differs from its companion volumes in the Cambridge Language Assessment Series in that it devotes relatively little emphasis to formal testing Indeed, McKay builds a strong case for the limitations of traditional pencil and paper tests and provides informed and detailed analyses of the many alternatives available to educators The opening chapter, aptly titled “A Special Case for Young Learner Assessment,” contrasts children with adults in key areas such as literacy and cognitive skills Chapter 2, “Young Learners and Language Learning,” closely examines the nature of children’s language competence from sociocultural and cognitive perspectives, and chapter 3, “Research Into the Assessment of Young Learners,” links this to the relevant literature Chapter 4, “Assessing Language Use Through Tasks,” uses the Bachman & Palmer (1996) framework for analyzing task usefulness in a young learner context “Classroom Assessment of Language Use,” chapter 5, is what McKay calls “the cornerstone of assessment for younger BOOK REVIEWS 681 learners” (p 173) because of its tight connection between teaching and assessing This encomium contrasts with the critical stance adopted toward testing young learners through large-scale tests (chapter 9) Two chapters in between, “Assessing Oral Language” (chapter 6) and “Assessing Reading and Writing” (chapter 7), address the nature of the four skills (listening is discussed with speaking) and methods of supporting their development, and the third, “Evaluating Young Learners’ Performance and Progress” (chapter 8) moves away from method to scoring criteria The final chapter, “The Way Forward,” outlines future directions in the field with a plea for more collaboration between testing and teaching professionals McKay highlights a number of themes that are obscured in the adultoriented assessment literature One such issue is vulnerability: Young learners are more susceptible to criticism than adults (p 14) The practical result is that children need constant feedback and reassurance during the assessment process An ethical dimension is that children are easily hurt by score reporting that labels them as underachieving McKay also devotes much attention to the challenge of constructing appropriate tasks for the age group In terms of content, young learners can only successfully engage with topics and situations that correspond to their world and experience (p 31) All too often in an ESL environment, the performance of second-language children is measured alongside native-speaking children with test instruments that assume familiarity with the target culture Obviously, the result is bias toward the native speakers (p 336) Current understanding of young learner competences is, as McKay admits (p 61), somewhat patchy and inconclusive because of the dearth of empirical research into the second-language assessment of children Assessment should be better informed by work in child language development, and in chapter McKay identifies some very relevant positions on language learning Some assertions from the literature, however, may be accepted a little too unquestioningly For example, McKay follows Skehan (1989) in stressing the importance of lexical chunks in communication We know that when young learners are learning language, they rely heavily on the formulaic system, incorporating chunks, or formulaic items, and using these to understand and get their meaning across This is so in first and second language learning (p 36) Actually, the role of chunks in young learners’ language acquisition is controversial First, there are not enough relevant studies on children learning English for McKay to be so categorical It is telling that McKay’s references in this section are all to secondary sources rather than empirical investigations Second, the parallel between first and second language acquisition is questionable Not everyone accepts the contribution 682 TESOL QUARTERLY of chunks to first language acquisition Generative linguists, for example, dismiss chunks as largely irrelevant to language development (see, e.g., Radford, 1990, pp 16–18) Formulaic language may be a feature of children’s spoken discourse but it has not been proven how significant it is to language acquisition or communicative competence What is clear is that a large overlap exists between teaching and assessing young learners It is a truism that children learn by doing, so McKay advocates ongoing classroom assessment that mirrors, and often blends with, the learning process in the classroom Methods of classroom assessment include observation of tasks (p 153), portfolios (p 159), projects (p 163), storytelling (p 198), and teacher–learner writing conferences (p 258) McKay provides clear and realistic examples that show the unique contribution teachers can make to classroom assessment The spectre of reliability inevitably casts its dark shadow in alternative assessment because appraisal could be inconsistent and subjective, especially in a high-stakes situation (Read, 2000) McKay suggests that, generally, reliability may need to be reconsidered with young learners because children need a high level of individual support and feedback during tasks, which can lead to a less than level playing-field across a test-taking population Reliability can be increased by standardizing the nature of the task and assessment This is illustrated by application of Bachman & Palmer’s (1996) influential test usefulness framework Assessing Young Language Learners deserves a wide target audience because it will inform academic research, professional test-writing, and classroom practice for those working with and assessing young learners It presents a state-of-the-art snapshot of a field that is still very much in a stage of tender development itself Praticitioners may have to wait some time for a few of the ways forward McKay envisages in the last chapter of the book, such as a journal devoted to assessing young learners (p 362), but volumes like this provide hope that the first tottering steps in the right direction are being taken REFERENCES Bachman, L., & Palmer, A (1996) Language testing in practice Oxford: Oxford University Press Radford, A (1990) Syntactic theory and the acquisition of English syntax Oxford: Blackwell Read, J (2000) Assessing vocabulary Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Shehan, P (1989) Individual differences in second-language learning London: Edward Arnold WAYNE RIMMER Reading University Reading, England BOOK REVIEWS 683