| International Language Testing Association/Language Testing Research Colloquium Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting 22 February 2001 7:00-8:30 p.m. 1. Minutes of previous meeting The minutes of the previous ILTA/LTRC business meeting held in 2. Matters arising from the previous minutes All matters arising from the previous minutes would be dealt with on the agenda for the St. Louis 2001 meeting, which was displayed on an OHT. 3. Treasurer's Report: The Treasurer of ILTA, Antony Kunnan (AK), presented a statement of accounts on an OHT. Members were informed that he had opened an account with the Bank of America in Since December 2000, awards for three ILTA sponsored workshops have been paid (US$7,500.00) and the bill for LTU from July to December 1999 was also paid ( The balance amounts from the A member inquired whether there was a budget for the coming period. The President (and former treasurer), Caroline Clapham (CMC), commented that there never has been such a budget. She thanked AK for his report. Action: AK 4. Bylaws The Chairman of the bylaws Committee, Brian Lynch (BL), explained the process of revising the bylaws. The committee, consisting of himself, Liz Hamp-Lyons and Constant Leung, had spent much of its time sorting out details regarding the duties of the Secretary and Members-at-Large. With regard to the proposed awards, the committee had primarily been charged with looking at: a) Distinguished Lifetime Achievement b) Outstanding Young Person The Committee recommended that an ad hoc committee be formed to develop a Lifetime Achievement Award, to be administered by ILTA, possibly in conjunction with the University of Cambridge Language Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) who would fund the award. Once this work is done, the committee would initiate a proposal for amending the Bylaws (possibly including the creation of a new standing committee on “Awards”). A Young Person's award had already been set up by ETS in the form of the Young Researcher's award. Another of their core tasks had been defining the relationship between ILTA and LTRC. Their guiding principle had been to retain the autonomy and anarchy of LTRC whilst at the same time formalizing procedures with ILTA. They recommended that the each LTRC program committee should retain overall responsibility for the LTRC which they were organizing, but that ILTA should take responsibility for underwriting LTRC finances. Fred Davidson(FD) thanked BL and the committee on behalf of the Executive Board. Action: ILTA Executive Board 5. Announcement of ILTA Officers and Executive Board for 2001 The names of the elected members of the ILTA Executive Board for 2001 were displayed on an OHT (with apologies offered for the omission of Alan Davies' name and the misspelling of Vivien President Caroline Clapham (CMC) Vice-President Fred Davidson (FD) Immediate Past President Alan Davies (AD) Secretary Vivien Treasurer Members-at-Large Cathie Elder (CE) Dorry Kenyon DK) Tom Lumley (TL) John Read (JR) 6. Language Testing Update The co-editor of LTU, CMC, announced that the next issue of LTU was ready and would be mailed to members soon. She had several copies with her which members were invited to peruse. Action: CMC 7. Updating of ILTA Best Paper award. As hoped last year, the awards for Best Paper have been brought up to date and both awards for 1998 and 1999 will be presented at the banquet on Friday 23 February. The financial aspect of the award for the Best Paper for 2000 would be increased to US$500 to bring this in line with the Robert Lado award for Best Student Presentation. Action: CMC/AK and Best Paper committee 8. ILTA Executive Board Announcements and Recommendations CMC presented the ILTA Executive Board recommendations for information/ discussion by Members. a) Announcement of ILTA committees: Nominating Committee: Gene Halleck had been invited and had agreed to chair the nominating committee in 2001 (members: Jayanti Banerjee, Angela Hasselgren & Barry O’Sullivan) Action: Gene Halleck Code of Practice Committee (Chairs: Lyle Bachman and Kenji Ohtomo): As neither of the chairs was present at the meeting, Alan Davies reported on behalf of the committee. In terms of liaison between the two, he commented that it was important to look at the APA document in light of our own Code of Ethics in relation to practice. Randy Thrasher added that he would be the designated liaison in Action: Lyle Bachman and Randy Thrasher b) ILTA-MEM and ILTA Homepage VB had agreed to a request from the Executive Board Vivien Action: VB and Glenn Fulcher (Post meeting note: Due to a change of circumstances, the ILTA-MEM list will continue to be run by Glenn Fulcher out of c) LTRC-ILTA Registration Fee structure. Discounts for LTRC was suggested. The chair of the next to be held LTRC, Liz Hamp-Lyons pointed out that a decision was urgent because of financial planning for the next meeting. Tim McNamara commented that it was unfair for LTRC attendees to bear the cost of a discount for ILTA members. He suggested that there should be a discount for members but that ILTA should pay the deficit to LTRC. AK requested clarification as to how payment could be made. It was noted that ILTA members received a discount at Tsukuba, which was paid for by LTRC attendees. TL reminded members that the ILTA-LTRC financial relationship ensures that any surplus goes back to ILTA. Proposal by Tim McNamara, seconded by Gene Halleck: Ø There should be a discount at LTRC for ILTA members Ø The cost of the discount should be borne by ILTA rather than LTRC attendees The proposal was voted on and carried unanimously
Action: Chairs of future LTRCs/AK d) Distinguished Lifetime Achievement UCLES had offered an award of $500 which had been approved by the EB. A committee would be set up by the EB and UCLES Action: CMC e) Language testing around the world CMC quoted from the constitution on the Aims of ILTA relating to language testing around the world. i) Workshops: 1999 - 3 awards were made from 6 submissions 2000 - a further 3 awards were made from 6 submissions ii) Outreach: There would be a meeting to advise on how to take this further. Action: CMC 9. LT + 50 FD suggested that ILTA could increase its international profile through events such as an LT+50 conference to celebrate 50 years of TOEFL in ten years time. Members were reminded about the LT+25 conference organized by John de Jong, Bernard Spolsky and Douglas Stevenson and held in Israel, to honour 25 years of modern language testing, not simply TOEFL, which was not mentioned at LT+25. There was some discussion as to where an LT+50 conference might be held. FD suggested that such a conference could result in a book and would have its own Website and generate publicity for iLTA Action: FD and Micheline Chalhoub-Deville. 10. ILTA Membership: FD in his role as new V-P of ILTA was concerned at the size of the ILTA membership. There was considerable discussion of the issue with suggestions and comments from members including: Ø Ethnography of membership - ILTA could consider sponsoring members from he third world. Ø President doesn't have enough time to get particularly involved in ILTA. FD outlined two competing models to solve this problem: 1) increase the President's term of Office; 2) be more proactive during the existing three years (VP-P-IPP). Ø A member queried the principle duties of the President. As President, FD intends to have outreach into the broader language testing community. Ø ILTA should take note of new associations such as Ø The affiliates committee should start functioning again. Ø Have regional centres. Ø The IPP, Alan Davies, commented that there are already many organizations relating to ILTA. Action: EB 11. LTRC archives FD expressed the desire to hand over the archives to someone else. All archives are now on the ILTA Webpage. No offers to take over the archives were immediately forthcoming. Action: FD 12. Progress Report: LTRC 2002 ( Liz Hamp-Lyons (LHL), chair of the LTRC 2002 Program Committee, informed members that fliers were available for LTRC 2002 which would be held at the 13. LTRC 2003 Suggestions were offered that LTRC 2003 could be held in either Ø LTRC 2003 would follow on very closely from Hong Kong if held in the Ø LTRC 2005 should historically link with AILA which would be held in Ø perhaps LTRC 2004 should not link with TESOL but should also be held in the summer. Ø In principle, the members were in favour of Proposal by Barry O'Sullivan, seconded by Dan Douglas Ø The venue for the LTRC 2003 should be The proposal was voted on by members and carried unanimously. Action: EB and Barry O'Sullivan 14. Any Other Business There was much discussion of themes for future conferences. A suggestion was made (Tim McNamara) that an appropriate theme would be Constructs in research in classroom based assessment. LHL pointed out that it was not appropriate to have proposals for themes because, as the constitution stands, the theme of an LTRC is the sole responsibility of the particular Program committee. She added, however, that she supported TM's suggestion. AK announced that there would be a conference on ethics in language testing funded by a grant from ETS, to support attendance from overseas. More details would be forthcoming in the near future. Thanks for their work over the past year were offered to VB, CMC and the outgoing members of the ILTA Board. |