High-stakes Tests, Low-stakes Tests and Test-takers' Attitude

The new millennium is said to be the era of learner-centeredness: learners’ positions and their potentials in the complicated procedure of learning either a foreign or second language are of major importance. As being the crucial instrument used to gauge the outcome of the process, language tests need to be designed under experts’ scrutiny; moreover, test takers’ attitudes are invaluable resources for test developers and policy makers. In principle, this book focuses on English language tests for the sake of reviewing them from test takers’ standpoint in consequential (high-stakes) and non-consequential (low-stakes) testing situations and it makes a comparison and contrast between these two groups of test takers’ attitude towards such tests. The ultimate purpose of this book is to suggest the ways through which test developers can devise test to inculcate more positive feelings in learners toward language tests. To sum up, since teaching and testing are in mutual relations, the content of this book can greatly help designing more valid tests which would lead to better curricula and as a result higher learning rates, both at school and at university levels.