assessment of critical literacy in language testers and non-language testers

Language assessment courses (lacs) are taught by professionals who have majored in the area of language testing (language testers or lts), or by others who come from different language related majors (non-language testers, non-lts). different language assessment courses may be developed, depending on who teaches the course and the instructors’ understanding of assessment literacy and assessment critical literacy. this study seeks to investigate assessments of critical literacy between language testers and non- language testers. participants were 30 language instructors that filled the checklist out. the checklist consisted of 35 items. findings from chi square and independent t-test showed that language testers agree with practical training while non-language testers with theoretical training; non- lts the course was more helpful for their pre- service/in-service teachers than for lts; and lts spend significantly more time on standardized testing while non-lts focused more on classroom assessment. there are significant differences in the content of the courses depending on the instructors’ background in 13 topic areas: test specifications, test administration, test scoring, standardized testing, test critiquing, test theory, test-taking skills or strategies, basic statistics/ advanced statistics, test ethics, history of language testing, classroom assessment (developing)/ alternative/performance assessment, rubric development and rater training.