About the LTRC
Established in 1990, the Language Testing Research Centre at the University of Melbourne has become an international leader in research and development in language assessment and language program evaluation. It is unique in that it is the only centre in the world dedicated exclusively to research in these fields.
The centre comprises a team of internationally renowned researchers in language assessment and language program evaluation. Directors of the centre have included Professor Alan Davies, author of Principles of Language Testing (1990, Blackwell) and The Native Speaker: Myth and Reality (Multilingual Matters, 2003), Professor Tim McNamara, author of Measuring Second Language Performance (1996, Longman), Language Testing (2000, Oxford) and co-author of Language Testing: The Social Dimension (2006, Blackwell) and Professor Liz Hamp-Lyons, editor of Assessing Second Language Writing in Academic Contexts (1991, Ablex) and co- author of Assessing the Portfolio: Principles for Practice, Theory, and Research. (2000, Hampton Press). The current Director is Associate Professor Catherine Elder, coeditor of Experimenting with Uncertainty (CUP 2001), Handbook of Applied Linguistics (Blackwell 2004), co-author of Dictionary of Language Testing (CUP 1999) and coeditor of the journal Language Testing (Sage).
The Centre has carried out many major projects for institutions and government agencies throughout the world. Clients have included: Educational Testing Service (Princeton, NJ), the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (Cambridge, UK), the South East Asia Ministers of Education Organisation (Singapore), the OECD (Paris) and other agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Chile, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.