Professor Tim McNamara
Professor - Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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Qualifications
BA (Hons) (Melbourne), Dip Ed (Melbourne),Dip RSA (London), MA (London), PhD (Melbourne).
Research interests and areas of supervision
Language testing, language and identity, language teaching, languages for specific purposes and the history of applied linguistics.
Biography
Building on a career as an EFL/ESL teacher and teacher trainer in Australia and the United Kingdom, Tim McNamara has taught Applied Linguistics at 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). 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). He 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. 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 and the International Journal of Applied Linguistics.
Selected publications
Books
- McNamara, T., and Roever, C., (2006) Language Testing: The Social Dimension. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell (2006) [with Carsten Roever]
- McNamara, T., Language Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2000)
- McNamara, T., Measuring Second Language Performance. London and New York: Addison Wesley Longman (1996)
Other publications
- McNamara, T., and Ryan, K., (in press) "Testing identity: Language tests and Australian citizenship," in Norrby, C., and Hajek, J., (eds) Uniformity and Diversity in Language Policy: Global Perspectives. Bristol: Multilingual Matters
- McNamara, T., (in press) "Measuring deficit," in Candlin, C.N., and Crichton, J., (eds) Discourses of Deficit. London: Palgrave Macmillan
- McNamara, T., (2010) "Reading Derrida: Language, identity and violence." Applied Linguistics Review 1, 1, pp. 23 - 44
- McNamara, T., (2009) "Australia: The Dictation Test redux?" Language Assessment Quarterly 6, 1, pp. 106 - 111
- McNamara, T., (2009) "Principles of testing and assessment," in Knapp, K., and Seidlhofer, B., (eds) Handbook of Foreign Language Communication and Learning, Volume 6 of Handbooks of Applied Linguistics (pp. 607 - 627). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
- Iwashita, N., Brown, A., McNamara, T., and O'Hagan, S., (2008) "Assessed levels of second language speaking proficiency: How distinct?" in Applied Linguistics 29, 1, pp. 24 - 49
- McNamara, T. and Shohamy, E., (2008) "Language tests and human rights," in International Journal of Applied Linguistics 18, 1, pp. 89 - 95