What is it about?
Controls on immigration and border security are increasing under the UK's so-called 'hostile environment' policy. As part of this, the UK Government has introduced 'Secure English Language Tests' which are supposed to ensure that only genuine higher education students are able to travel to the UK to study. This article looks at how the Government has tendered for new language tests for Higher Education students in the UK, and finds that test quality and student interests seem much less important than detailed security concerns.
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Why is it important?
The 'hostile environment' has been damaging for the higher education sector and for students, but also has raised problematic issues for language testing professionals.
Perspectives
Writing this article offered an opportunity to combine language testing expertise with critical discourse analysis, and therefore offer a new perspective on the issues we discuss.
Dr Johann W Unger
Lancaster University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Language Testing in the ‘Hostile Environment’: The Discursive Construction of ‘Secure English Language Testing’ in the UK, Applied Linguistics, May 2019, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1093/applin/amz017.
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