Assessing Language Competencies in German as a Foreign / Second Language

While assessment theory has expanded in recent years to include principles such as impact and construct validity, language assessment validity studies in German-speaking countries are still mostly based on classical test theory. In this article, we focus on language diagnostic tests for children with German as a second language and argue that concepts developed within argument-based approaches such as Bachman and Palmer's Assessment Use Argument (2010) should be employed to expand the classical model so that it accounts better for tests focusing on language proficiency.