Educational Alternatives, Volume 12, 2014

Abstract: Recently, there has been a lot of emphasis on the interdisciplinary studies among the fields, bought by the post modernism in the late 20th century. Some of the theories in scientific engineering physical sciences have been of great help into language teaching, learning and testing. Among them, chaos/complexity theory was found to be meaningful similarities with SLA. There also exist outstanding similarities between chaos/complexity theory and language testing and dynamic assessment. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it briefly deals with characteristics of the chaos/complexity theory and dynamic assessment; then, it attempts to argue how the study of chaos/complexity theory is meaningful in language testing and dynamic assessment. Concluding that language testing and dynamic assessment as complex systems are dynamic, complex, nonlinear, chaotic, unpredictable, sensitive to initial conditions, open, self-organizing, feedback sensitive, adaptive, strange attractor, fractal, connected and non reducible, this paper sheds light on some of the conundrums of language testing and dynamic assessment.