Since our last editorial in January 2020, the world has changed in unexpected and unprecedented ways. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a wide-ranging impact on our personal and professional lives, and we feel certain that this impact will be felt for some time yet. In the short-term, the effects of the pandemic on language testing practices have been marked: face-to-face testing was paused in many countries around the world, leading to a rapid shift to online testing to provide ways for test-takers to demonstrate language proficiency, particularly for university admissions. We, the editors of the journal Language Testing, were pleased to be able to offer some assistance to test score users through commissioning a review—written by Daniel R. Isbell and Benjamin Kremmel (2020)—on the new range of “take-at-home” language proficiency exams. This was a first for the journal: a commissioned review responding to a pressing need among test score users, which was produced in around four months from idea to publication. We hope to be able to respond as quickly to other urgent issues in the future, and we now have a template for how the journal can be more responsive to ongoing events in the world. If readers have ideas for timely reviews or commissioned papers, please email us. We will always consider proposals.

中文翻译：

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社论2021

自2020年1月发表上一篇社论以来，世界已经以意想不到的空前方式发生了变化。COVID-19大流行对我们的个人和职业生活产生了广泛的影响，我们确信这种​​影响还会持续一段时间。在短期内，流行病已对语言测试实践产生了影响：全球许多国家都停止了面对面测试，导致迅速转向在线测试，以为应试者提供表现出语言能力，尤其是大学录取。我们，《语言测试》杂志的编辑，很高兴能够通过委托由Daniel R. Isbell和Benjamin Kremmel（2020）撰写的关于“在家带”语言能力考试新范围的审查来为测验分数用户提供一些帮助。这是该杂志的第一篇文章：针对从成绩到发表大约四个月的测试分数用户的迫切需求进行了委托评审。我们希望将来能够对其他紧迫的问题做出快速响应，并且我们现在有了一个模板，可以了解期刊如何对世界上发生的事件做出更好的响应。如果读者对及时审核或委托论文有想法，请给我们发送电子邮件。我们将始终考虑提案。