30 Years on—Evolution or Revolution?

This epilogue considers the set of articles included in the issue as a response to the question posed by Morrow (1979): Communicative language testing—Evolution or revolution? Whereas the other articles in the issue would suggest that we are in a phase of gradual evolution, with much continuity since 1980, this article argues that, on the contrary, we are facing a number of challenges to communicative language testing and the testing of languages for specific purposes. These challenges come from two principal sources: (a) the advances in technology that are making possible the automatic scoring of speech and writing, and the associated return to psycholinguistic, even structuralist, models of proficiency; and (b) the need to reflect in language test constructs and practice the reality of English as a lingua franca communication. The article considers these issues in the light of the influence of the Common European Framework of Reference in language testing, an institution that it seems is now considered “too big to fail.”