Impacts of World Englishes on local standardized language proficiency testing in the Expanding Circle

The world Englishes (WEs) paradigm describes the spread of English in three concentric circles (Kachru, 1985) – Inner Circle (e.g., USA, UK, and Australia), Outer (e.g. India, Philippines, Singapore), Expanding China, Indonesia, Thailand). With Englishization nativization outside changing demographics users non-native speakers [NNSs] considerably outnumber native [NSs] [Crystal, 1995; Graddol, 1999], WEs research strongly advocates to recognize NNS varieties. Until today, has not only posed challenges to, but also encouraged changes in, language testing (LT) profession that been traditionally relying on standard Kachru, 1985; Lowenberg, 2002; Davies, Hamp–Lyons & Kemp, 2003; Hu, 2012; Brown, 2014).