A growing scholarly literature in a subfield of applied linguistics focuses on language testing and language requirements for migrants. We sought to understand what theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches have framed this research and propose future research directions. To this end, we conducted a systematic review of articles on language testing and migration published between 2001 and 2022 in the applied linguistics field. For each of the 46 studies which met inclusion/exclusion criteria, we randomly selected a control article from the same journals. Both the test corpus and the control corpus were double coded for theoretical and methodological characteristics and analysed using contingency tables, Mann–Whitney tests, and forward stepwise logistic regression to predict group membership. The findings revealed that literature on language testing and migration is highly reliant on critical theory and less reliant on features associated with empirical methods. We suggest that research in this domain would benefit from methodological reflexivity (i.e. questioning prevalent assumptions and employing theoretical variety) and that complementary approaches could lead to a more nuanced research consensus and promote research-policy collaboration.

中文翻译：

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语言测试和迁移研究中方法论反思性的呼吁

应用语言学子领域越来越多的学术文献关注移民的语言测试和语言要求。我们试图了解本研究的理论范式和方法论，并提出未来的研究方向。为此，我们对2001年至2022年间发表的应用语言学领域有关语言测试和迁移的文章进行了系统回顾。对于符合纳入/排除标准的 46 项研究中的每一项，我们从同一期刊中随机选择一篇对照文章。测试语料库和对照语料库都针对理论和方法学特征进行了双重编码，并使用列联表、曼-惠特尼测试和前向逐步逻辑回归进行分析以预测群体成员资格。研究结果表明，有关语言测试和迁移的文献高度依赖批判理论，而较少依赖与经验方法相关的特征。我们建议该领域的研究将受益于方法论的反身性（即质疑普遍的假设并采用理论多样性），并且补充方法可以导致更细致的研究共识并促进研究政策合作。