effect in English language assessment With globalization, the world has witnessed an increase in Internationalization of Higher Education, which has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of international students in the last 25 years. The prominence of English alongside this internationalization process has also seen the use of international tests of English such as Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), and International English Language Testing System (IELTS) as standard tools in the wider learning community. The increasing weight of these tools in education raises questions about the impact of such tests on teaching and learning, with suggestions that language skills are suffering due to the impact of tests. As English as an International Language (EIL) continues to become more stable through the establishment of clearer features of context-driven English, it is inevitable that there will be significant debate on language norms and proficiency regarding teaching and assessment. The field of applied linguistics should expect to see more specific discussion on the recognition of the way language norms are influenced by use and context, but this remains an unsolved problem in the area of language assessment. See also List of language proficiency tests Language proficiency Teaching to the test, an example of washback References Impact assessment Educational evaluation methods Applied linguistics Language tests Language education Language assessment Unsolved problems in linguistics