“…For tests of language abilities, many theorists have recently argued that assessment tasks need to "somehow capture or recreate…the essence of language use" (Bachman, 1990, p. 300), urging that authenticity should be a fundamental criterion for the validity of tasks that aim to evaluate how well people can really communicate in a language (Bachman & Palmer, 1996;Lewkowicz, 2000;Spence-Brown, 2001;Spolsky, 1985). In turn, to achieve educational relevance, test tasks should elicit performance that is congruent with instructors' perceptions of their students' abilities, as numerous different inquiries in secondlanguage assessment have recently emphasized and demonstrated (e.g., Brindley, 1998Brindley, , 2000Chalhoub-Deville, 1995;Elder, 1993;Epp & Stawychny, 2001;Grant, 1997;North, 1995North, , 2000Stansfield & Kenyon, 1996;Sullivan, Weir, & Saville, 2002; Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 1998). Nonetheless, surprisingly few studies (apart from those cited in the preceding sentence) have systematically sought the input of experienced teachers for the design or validation of second-language tests, despite a published literature that has established the reliability and informative value of teachers' judgments of their students' abilities or achievements in relation to standardized tests in various domains of education (e.g., Griffin, 1995;Hoge & Coladarci, 1989;Miesels, Bickel, Nicholson, Xue, & Atkins-Burnett, 2001;Sharpley & Edgar, 1986).…”