Cambridge Scholars Publishing Testing Academic Language Proficiency

This book focuses on the development of the process of teaching and assessing foreign language competence for study purposes in a pluricultural and plurilingual context. It addresses not only the individual who is learning the language for academic purposes (LAP), but also other stakeholders, like teachers, schools and universities, and external boards, such as examination boards for language testing. The book highlights an ongoing research project at the University of Parma, Italy, aimed at developing teaching programs and evaluative tools for language for academic purposes. Starting from a reflection upon the nature of language for study purposes stemming from the tradition of English for Academic Purposes, it describes the model of an LAP test implemented in Italian secondary schools and universities, and shows the findings concerning the performance in the test of both students whose mother tongue is Indo-European and those who speak non-Indo-European languages. About the Author Marco Mezzadri is an Associate Professor of Educational Linguistics at the University of Parma, Italy, where he co-ordinates the Laboratory of Language Teaching Methodology. He received his PhD in Linguistics and Language Teaching Methodology from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy, and he has worked as a teacher trainer for FL teachers in Italy and abroad for over twenty-five years. He has published around 80 articles, essays, and book chapters on foreign language teaching, in addition to ten monographs. His main fields of research are learning, teaching and assessing language for academic purposes; bilingual education and language acquisition; neuroscientific aspects of language learning and teaching; teaching Italian as a FL; and language policies.