The introductory chapter discusses the ubiquity of tests, the effects of washback, and emerging issues in language testing, and it outlines the book’s four parts: Part 1, “Assessing Intercultural Competence,” has an overview chapter on the topic and one chapter each on measuring intercultural competence in business and in school settings. Part 2, “Assessing Autonomy,” presents a chapter that provides a framework for assessing autonomy and one chapter each on assessing the autonomy of young learners in school and on evaluating based on listening to school age learners’ voices. Part 3, “Assessing Language and Literature,” has a chapter on principles that can help solve six dilemmas in assessing language and literature and one chapter each on assessing the creative process in a university English-as-a-second-language (ESL) setting and on measuring the language awareness of undergraduate English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students. Part 4, “Language and Content,” presents a chapter on using functional and register approaches to assess elementary school second-language science content and one chapter each on native-speaking teachers’ reactions to texts written by EFL students studying content and on formative assessment of oral causal science discourse in native and ESL school-age students.

Organizing each section around an overview chapter and two chapters that focus on specific local testing contexts was an excellent idea. Additionally, the book is physically well laid out and attractive. It has an adequate table of contents and considerately provides separate references for each chapter. The book unfortunately does not have an index, which limits its reference potential.

Although this book does cover new ground, the phrase “testing the untestable” in the title is misleading. Teachers have been assessing aspects of learning like those covered in this book for years. That such classroom testing issues are different and separate from standardized testing will not surprise any language tester who is familiar with the notions of norm-referenced and criterion-referenced testing. The fact that norm-referenced tests do not typically assess the aspects of language covered in this book does not mean those aspects are untestable. Indeed, this book illustrates how, with the proper criterion-referenced focus (i.e., local, specific, curriculum-focused assessments), intercultural competence, autonomy, language and literature, and content can indeed be assessed.