Hosted by the University of Macau, the third Assessing World Languages Conference (AWL3) held from November 6 to 9 has successfully concluded. The AWL3 was organized by the Department of English in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, with Prof. Antony Kunnan, Prof. Cecilia Zhao and Prof. Matthew Wallace serving as conference chairs, with the support of the US Consulate and the British Council.
The aim of the conference—bringing greater attention to languages and linguistic contexts that are typically under-represented in the language assessment field—attracted many of the most prominent scholars in the field of language assessment, notably Prof. Alister Cumming, Prof. James D. Brown, Prof. Yong-Won Lee, Prof. Yasuyo Sawaki, and Prof. Rama Mathew. These speakers were brought together to discuss assessment practices in varied regions in the world, including the US, Canada, UK, China, Japan, Korea and Thailand. The presentations delivered innovative ideas on test validation and development, language learning and teaching, washback, writing and speaking assessment.
Building on the success of previous AWL conferences, which were held in 2017 and 2018, the AWL3 was also well attended and received. Conference attendees, including the invited speakers, accepted speakers, language teachers of Mandarin, Cantonese, Portuguese and English, and graduate students from universities in Macao, Hong Kong, and mainland China, indicated that they were eager to make use of the ideas discussed in the conference in their respective work.