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Carolyn E. Turner named recipient of the 2018 Cambridge English Language Assessment/ILTA Distinguished Achievement Award

Published: 16 April 2018

Carolyn E. Turner has been named as the winner of the 2018 Cambridge English Language Assessment/ILTA Distinguished Achievement Award.

Carolyn Turner completed her PhD in Second Language Education at McGill University in 1988 with a dissertation on the factor structure of cloze test performance in francophone university level students. She went on to work as Assistant then Associate Professor at McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education.

Dr. Turner’s work on rating scale development with John Upshur (Concordia University) and learning-oriented assessment with James Purpura (Teachers College, Columbia University) can be considered groundbreaking and she has led the field in the application of mixed methods approaches to test development and test validation. Throughout her work, mentorship of students has been a central plank of her career. Dr. Turner was a founding member of the Canadian Association for Language Assessment and has served and continues to serve on numerous government committees concerned with the ESL teaching, assessment and evaluation at various levels of schooling. She is a current Board member and former Associate Editor for Language Assessment Quarterly and has served as Member and Chair of the TOEFL-TSE Committee and on the Steering Committee for the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Aviation English Language Testing Service (AELTS). She made a major and sustained contribution to the International Language Testing Association (ILTA) serving two terms as member at large and later taking on the roles Vice-President, President and Past President (2007 to 2012). Carolyn has been involved and continues to be involved with key ILTA committees including the Consulting Committee for the Working Group on Language Test Standards and the Code of Ethics, the joint ICAO/ILTA Task Force and Advisory Committee for the development of a Conformance Service for Aviation English Tests and the recently formed ILTA’s Advocacy/Public Engagement Committee. She has also assumed major responsibilities for the organization of ILTA’s annual conference both as member of the Organizing Committee for LTRC Ottawa 2005 and as co-Chair with James Purpura for LTRC Barcelona 2007

ILTA (International Language Testing Association) is an international group of language testing and assessment scholars and practitioners whose dedication and work are respected both within and outside the profession, and who together define what it means to be a language tester. ILTA’s purpose is to promote the improvement of language testing throughout the world.

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