Building on a career as an EFL/ESL teacher and teacher trainer in Australia and the United Kingdom, Tim McNamara taught Applied Linguistics at Melbourne from 1987 until his retirement in 2018. With Dr Terry Quinn he established the graduate program in Applied Linguistics from 1987, and with Professor Alan Davies founded the Language Testing Research Centre in 1990.
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 has done extensive work on the use of language tests in immigration and citizenship contexts, and on language analysis in verifying the identities of asylum seekers). 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. Tim is the author of Language Testing (OUP, 2000) and co-author (with Carsten Roever) of Language Testing: The Social Dimension (Blackwell, 2006). His recent books include Language and Subjectivity (CUP, 2019) and (with Ute Knoch and Jason Fan) Fairness, Justice, and Language Assessment (OUP, 2019). Tim 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 part of the team involved in the original development of IELTS. He is the creator of the Occupational English Test (OET), used for the registration of health professionals in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand. Tim is a frequent speaker at international conferences and has served on the board of Applied Linguistics, TESOL Quarterly, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, Measurement, the International Journal of Applied Linguistics and the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca. Tim is a former President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL, 2017-2018) and was Conference Chair for the 2017 AAAL conference in Portland, OR.
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Tim McNamara's highlights
FEATURED Journal article
What Counts in Second Language Oral Communication Ability? The Perspective of Linguistic Laypersons
Read moreTim McNamara's selected work
Projects
Displaying the 7 most recent projects by Tim McNamara.
Project Types
5
Research Grant
2
Research Contracts
Scholarly Works
Displaying the 120 most recent scholarly works by Tim McNamara.
Honours, Awards and Fellowships
Distinguished Achievement Award, 2015
Winner of the award for best book published in the field of language testing, 2006-2008
NOTINLIST - Not in List
FAHA - Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Credentials
Positions
Honorary
Languages And Linguistics
Regular Member
British Association of Applied Linguistics
2nd Vice-President And Member Of The Executive 2015-2019
American Association for Applied Linguistics
Regular Member
Applied Linguistics Association of Australia
Regular Member; Former President
International Language Testing Association
Education
Doctor of Philosophy
University of Melbourne
Master of Arts
University of London
Diploma In Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Royal Society of Arts (UK)
Graduate Diploma in Education
University of Melbourne
Bachelor of Arts
University of Melbourne