The workshop will engage emerging researchers into the discussion on the issues of language assessment in linguistically diverse contexts. It aims to focus on both relevant dimensions of language assessment: the dimension of instruments’ development and the dimension of data analysis. The purpose is, therefore, to introduce and critically discuss the challenges of developing new instruments for simultaneous assessment of multiple languages, the reliability of newly developed instruments, and the comparability of tests across different languages. It will also address the relevant aspects of integrating language assessment into the research design.

The growing linguistic diversity in most European regions is reflected in the heterogeneity of students’ language repertoires and language proficiencies (Gogolin & Duarte, 2017). The individual repertoires may embrace a bright spectrum of languages, including but not limited to the majority language, heritage language, and foreign languages learned at school. Language proficiency in the languages from a person’s repertoire may vary between the languages from receptive comprehension skills only to elaborated literacy skills (Schalley et al., 2016). As linguistic diversity affects classrooms across Europe, and as language has been identified as key to educational success, it is imperative that researchers in the field communicate and collaborate.

The workshop will introduce examples of instruments to assess language competencies as applied in studies within the EERA Network on Language and Education (NW31). The first part of the workshop will provide a general overview of the existing language assessment practices within the network from different national contexts. The participants will get insights into the variety of instruments to measure language skills in multiple languages. The second part will focus on the language assessment based on the experience gained in the German panel study “Multilingual Development: A Longitudinal Perspective (MEZ).” At first, a general introduction to the project will be provided to discuss the integration of language assessment into the research design. After that, the selected instruments applied in this project to assess language competencies will be presented. It will be shown which language competencies are assessed in the majority, heritage, and foreign languages and how instruments were adapted to assess language competencies in the heritage languages Russian and Turkish as well in the foreign languages English, French, and Russian. General principles in the adaption of instruments and challenges will be pointed out. The selected instruments include writing prompts developed for the assessment of productive written language skills and a c-test as a measure of general language proficiency.

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