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umes of collected papers have been published; and there are now at least two regular major international conferences each year devoted to language testing. The field of language testing has seen the development of both a model of language test performance that can guide empirical research, and the application of a variety of research approaches and tools to facilitate such research. In sum, language testing can now claim its own research questions and research methodology. As Bachman (1990a) states, “perhaps for the first time in the history of language testing it is possible to see a genuine symbiotic relationship between applied linguistic theory and the tools of empirical research as they are applied to both the development and the examination of a theory of performance on language tests [and to] the development and use of better language tests” (p. 220). Also as a result of developments in the past decade, language testing is in a better position, I believe, both to make contributions to its sister disciplines in applied linguistics and to be enriched by developments in those disciplines. The next part of this paper briefly describes what I consider two contributions that language testing has to offer to the areas of language learning and language teaching. PART 2: AN INTERACTIONAL APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TEST DEVELOPMENT 　　Language tests are used for a variety of purposes; these can be grouped into two broad categories. First, the results of language tests may be used to make inferences about test takers’ language abilities or to make predictions about their capacity for using language to perform future tasks in contexts outside the test itself. Second, decisions (e.g., selection, diagnosis, placement, progress, grading, certification, employment) may be made about test takers on the basis of what we infer from test scores about their levels of ability or their capacity for nontest language use. A major consideration in both the design and use of language tests, therefore, is the extent to which the specific test tasks we include elicit instances of language use from which we can make such inferences or predictions. What this implies is that in order to investigate and demonstrate the validity of the uses we make of test scores, we need a theoretical framework within which we can describe language test performance as a specific instance of language use. Specifically, in order to make 　　In an instructional setting, for example, in which we may want to use a test to measure learners’ degrees of mastery of different components of language ability that have been covered in the curriculum, we need to demonstrate that the content of the test is representative of the content of the course. Specifically, we will want to demonstrate that the components of language ability included in the test correspond to those covered in the course and that the characteristics of the test tasks correspond to the types of classroom learning activities included in the program. Demonstrat-ing correspondences such as these provides some justification for interpreting test scores as evidence of levels of ability in the different components tested. 　　Another example would be a situation in which we need to select individuals for possible employment in a job which requires a specified level of proficiency in a foreign language. In this case, we need to demonstrate that the tasks included in the test are represen-tative of the language use tasks requi