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Convenors:
Prof. Peter L. Patrick
Language & Linguistics
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester
CO4 3SQ
Essex, UK
+44 (0) 1206 872088

Prof. Monika Schmid Language & Linguistics University of Essex & University of Groningen
+44 (0) 1206 872089  

Dr. Karin Zwaan
Centre for Migration Law Radboud University Nijmegen P.O. Box 9049
6500KK Nijmegen
the Netherlands
+31 24 361.2934

E-mail: larg@essex.ac.uk

Tim McNamara

Tim McNamara photoExpertise:

  • Applied Linguistics - Language Assessment - LADO practitioner

Qualifications:

  • BA Hons (Melbourne)

  • Dip Ed (Melbourne)

  • Dip RSA (London)

  • MA (London)

  • PhD (Melbourne)

Building on a career as an EFL/ESL teacher and teacher trainer in Austraia and the UK, Prof. Tim McNamara has taught Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne since 1987. His language testing research has focused on performance assessment, theories of validity, the use of Rasch models, and the social and political meaning of language tests. He is currently researching the use of language tests in immigration and citizenship contexts, and in verifying the identities of asylum seekers (LADO). His work on language and identity has focused on the impact of poststructuralist approaches to identity and subjectivity, and he has a particular interest in the writings on language of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

Prof. McNamara has acted as a consultant with Educational Testing Service, Princeton, where he worked on the development of the speaking sub-test of TOEFL iBT. He was also one of the original developers of IELTS. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences and has served on the boards of the journals Applied Linguistics, TESOL Quarterly, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, Measurement and the International Journal of Applied Linguistics. He was a founding member of the Language & National Origin Group who authored the 2004 Guidelines...

Research and Teaching Interests:

Language testing, language and identity, language teaching, languages for specific purposes and the history of applied linguistics.

Tim McNamara's Webpage

Email:

tfmcna                Please add:        @unimelb.edu.au

Related Publications

2010. (with Carolien van den Hazelkamp & Maaike Verrips). Language testing, validity and LADO. In Karin Zwaan, Pieter Muysken & Maaike Verrips, eds., Language and Origin. The Role of Language in European Asylum Procedures: A Linguistic and Legal Survey, pp. 61-71. Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers.

  • This paper sets out an argument for seeing LADO from the perspective of validity theory in language testing, and develops an agenda for LADO research.

2008. (with Elana Shohamy.)  Language tests and human rights.  International Journal of Applied Linguistics 18(1): 89-95.

2006. (with Carsten Roever.) Language Testing: The Social Dimension. Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell.

2005. 21st century Shibboleth: Language tests, identity and intergroup conflict. Language Policy 4(4): 351-370.

  • These three publications locate the use of LADO in the context of wider discussions of the social and political functions of the assessment of identity by means of language and language tests.  The book (McNamara & Roever 2006) is the fullest treatment of this perspective.

2004. What's wrong with using language tests to establish the claims of asylum seekers? Human Rights Defender 12(3): 23-25.

  • This is an explanation of the problematic character of the use of LADO in asylum seeker cases where the Guidelines for its use are not followed.

2004. (coauthor) Guidelines for the use of language analysis in relation to questions of national origin in refugee cases. The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law: Forensic Linguistics, 11(2): 261-266. Available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/.

2003. (with Diana Eades, Helen Fraser, Jeff Siegel & Brett Baker.) Linguistic identification in the determination of nationality: A preliminary report. Language Policy 2(2): 179-199.

  • This paper demonstrates the problematic character of LADO in the case of Afghan asylum seekers in Australia.