LLTF - Key Persons

Daniel J. Reed (PhD, Indiana University) has served as Head of Testing for the English Language Center (ELC) at Michigan State University (MSU) since 2005. He oversees test administration as well as research and test development in support of MSU's English exams for incoming international students. Under Dr. Reed's direction, the ELC provides exams that are used for the following purposes: determining whether international students have met MSU's English proficiency requirement for admission, placing students into English language classes, and evaluating the spoken English proficiency of graduate students who are non-native speakers of English and candidates for teaching assistant positions. Dr. Reed has played major roles in the development of proficiency tests in more than half a dozen languages and has conducted research on language aptitude and the learning of less commonly taught languages. He also serves on the board of directors for the Language Learning and Testing Foundation. In addition, Dr. Reed, along with ELC Director Dr. Susan Gass, has led the development of a large-scale English language testing program in Greece in collaboration with Anatolia College and the American College of Greece. Dr. Reed helped organize the 2013 MwALT Conference hosted by Michigan State University and has served as MwALT Treasurer since 2014.

Job Titles:

• Professional and Administrative Experience

Dr. Charles Stansfield founded LLTF in 2003 as a vehicle for promoting research on the assessment of language learners and for publishing measures of language aptitude. That same year, LLTF was incorporated in Maryland as a private operating foundation, and LLTF's application for initial nonprofit charitable status was approved by the IRS that same year. Permanent nonprofit status was granted in 2008. LLTF is funded through public donations, grants, contracts, and through the sale of its products. Dr. Charles Stansfield is an authority on second language testing. During his 50 year career, he has been a secondary school teacher of Spanish (1 year), a tenured professor and teacher trainer in the Department of Spanish Portuguese at the University of Colorado (Boulder) (11 years), a test program administrator at Educational Testing Service (5 years), director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics and director of the Division of Foreign Language Education and Testing at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC (8 years), founder and owner of a successful small business, Second Language Testing, Inc. (16 years), and founder and President of the Language Learning and Testing Foundation. Dr. Stansfield has developed and published proficiency tests in English as a second language and in 15 other languages. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books and research monographs and 60 research articles published in professional journals. He has served as or is currently a member of the editorial boards of Language Testing, the Journal of Second Language Writing, TESOL Quarterly, and the Modern Language Journal.

Weiping M. Wu. From 2001-2020, Dr. Weiping Wu was the director of the Yale-China Chinese Language Center at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The Yale-China center has a long history and a full-fledged program for Chinese as a Second Language, with over 50 teachers and staff. Prior to that he was a test developer at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC from 1990-1999 and Director of the Chinese Langauge Testing Program (CLTP) before he left CAL. He holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University. His areas of expertise are language testing, Chinese language teaching, translation and interpretation, and forensic linguistics. He was a certified State Court Interpreter (English-Chinese) and served as Court Interpreter Examination Program Rater for the National Center for State Courts (NCSC). He has published in areas related to assessment and sociolinguistics, and has taught and lectured widely at universities in Hong Kong, China and the United States. He was the principal developer of the self-instructional Rater Training Kit for the Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview in Mandarin, of the Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview in Cantonese, and of the Listening Summary Translation Exam in Southern Min. Currently, he is Yunshan Professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, in Guangzhou, China.