The 27th Summer School of Applied Language Studies: Language Acquisition and Assessment

The 27th Summer School of Applied Language Studies was held in Jyväskylä, Finland, on 8th to 11th June, 2009. This international event addressed the relationship between language acquisition and assessment. Scholars tracing the development of second language acquisition (SLA) have traditionally focused on the order or stages in which a learner acquires specific linguistic features (e.g. morphemes or vocabulary). By contrast, experts in language testing, influenced by the Common European Framework, have had a tendency to focus on how and in what situations the learner can use the second language. The purpose of the Summer School was to bring together these two views (linguistic vs. communicative/functional) and look at assessment criteria by presenting research on what grammatical structures or vocabulary are typical of a learner assessed as being at a given level on a standard rating scale.