I read Christopher Schaberg’s “The Textual Life of Airports.” If you like academic writing and you also like airports, this is the book for you. In the first of his three books about airports, Loyola University professor Shaberg explores how they have been depicted in literature and popular culture over the years. This is a curious topic – and not for everyone – but the book has attracted a lot of admirers.
I also read “Challenges and Innovations in Speaking Assessment” by Larry David and John M. Norris of ETS. This one is perfect if you are obsessed with standardized English tests, or obsessed with the history of ETS. Or both. I enjoyed reading about ETS’s early forays into speaking assessment for clients like the Peace Corps and the province of New Brunswick. There is also some good stuff about the “Test of Spoken English” which existed alongside the original TOEFL, which didn’t include any speaking questions. And, of course, I was happy to learn more about the ETS “SpeechRater” AI and how they handle templated responses. Less interesting were articles about more recent research at ETS. It’s always sad to read that sort of stuff knowing that it will never find its way into an actual product. You know, in many ways the story of modern day ETS is a story of research and innovations that don’t ever get used for any real purposes.
