
WELCOME TO TAFSIG
TAFSIG is a forum for sharing knowledge, ideas, practice and research on testing, assessment and feedback, and a facilitator for events that further research and practice in the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and beyond.
TAFSIG is a forum for sharing knowledge, ideas, practice and research on testing, assessment and feedback, and a facilitator for events that further research and practice in the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and beyond.
Rationale
Assessment is an important area of EAP, with high stakes decisions needing to be made for thousands of students every year. Language units in UK universities often have small testing teams, so one reason for this SIG is to have a forum for these test developers to learn from each other, as well as creating a repository of useful resources. More widely, it would be beneficial to explore theory and research informed formative and summative assessment and feedback practices in EAP, and perhaps other fields within HE, in order to develop language assessment literacy and engagement with developing trends, and to inform further research and development.
Aims
Our aims are to share expertise in the development of in-house EAP assessment and feedback practices, and their relationship with the wider university (e.g. university strategy, departmental needs, UKVI compliance) and EAP colleagues by, for example:
Contact
EMAIL
tafsig@baleap.org
TWITTER
@taf_sig
Call to Action
Assessment is an important area of EAP, with high stakes decisions needing to be made for thousands of students every year. Language units in UK universities often have small testing teams, so one reason for this SIG is to have a forum for these test developers to learn from each other, as well as creating a repository of useful resources. More widely, it would be beneficial to explore theory and research informed formative and summative assessment and feedback practices in EAP, and perhaps other fields within HE, in order to develop language assessment literacy and engagement with developing trends, and to inform further research and development.
Aims
Our aims are to share expertise in the development of in-house EAP assessment and feedback practices, and their relationship with the wider university (e.g. university strategy, departmental needs, UKVI compliance) and EAP colleagues by, for example:
- developing language assessment literacy within the EAP community,
- hosting webinars and Twitter chats @taf_sig,
- creating podcasts and blogs,
- running pre-conference workshops / meetings / seminars,
- producing a guide for in-house assessment development (e.g. development check-list, useful literature, statistical tools),
- providing a forum for EAP assessment specialists to explore and discuss issues relevant to EAP assessment for dissemination at conference and in publications,
- collaborating on assessment related research projects (e.g. validation studies),
- integrating existing BALEAP resources (e.g. ‘Can Do’ statements documents, Testing Working Party documents) into any new resources we create,
- collaborating with members of other testing organisations, e.g. UKALTA, BAAL TEASIG, and other university departments for assessment development projects / research,
- exploring areas of online testing, multi-modal assessment, and assessment for learning.
Contact
tafsig@baleap.org
@taf_sig
Call to Action

The EAP community would love to hear about what you are doing when it comes to testing, assessment, and feedback. We are interested in posts from practitioners, researchers and curriculum developers which could be:
Blogs can be up to 1,000 words and We also invite vlogs and podcasts up to 15 minutes long (these would be stored on our YouTube channel and shared on our website through that channel). While there are no requirements in terms of format we will be reviewing them before posting and we might contact you to approve revisions.
Please email your posts to tafsig@baleap.org
Looking forward to discussing, practising, and researching testing, assessment, and feedback with you.
- Case studies,
- Reflections on research,
- Informal, reflective accounts.
Blogs can be up to 1,000 words and We also invite vlogs and podcasts up to 15 minutes long (these would be stored on our YouTube channel and shared on our website through that channel). While there are no requirements in terms of format we will be reviewing them before posting and we might contact you to approve revisions.
Please email your posts to tafsig@baleap.org
Looking forward to discussing, practising, and researching testing, assessment, and feedback with you.