Newsroom
Obituary: Dr Caroline Clapham
Message from Dr Michael Milanovic, Chief Executive at Cambridge ESOL
17 December
It is with great sadness that I am writing to announce the death of our former colleague Dr Caroline Clapham who passed away at her home on 14th December. Caroline worked in Cambridge from September 2002 until the end of March 2004 as a member of the team working on IELTS within the Research and Validation Group. During her time with us she made many friends and is fondly remembered for her modesty and friendly nature, as well as for her wide knowledge of language testing. Unfortunately, not long after starting to work for Cambridge ESOL, Caroline was diagnosed with the illness which led to her retirement on grounds of ill-health, cutting short a distinguished career in such an untimely way.
Before joining Cambridge ESOL, Caroline had already established herself as a leading expert in language testing and as a much-loved member of the language testing community at large. She was an experienced language tester and in her early career in the 1970s constructed the first versions of the “PLAB test” for the Professional and Linguistics Assessment Board of the General Medical Council in the UK for testing the listening comprehension of overseas doctors.
Caroline was an established researcher and in coming to Cambridge after many years working for the University of Lancaster, she was well-placed to join the IELTS research team, having been the research coordinator for the IELTS development project in the 1980s. Her doctoral dissertation focussed on the development of IELTS investigating the effect of background knowledge on reading comprehension. This work contributed significantly to the revision of IELTS in 1995 and was published in 1996 as Volume 4 in the Studies in Language Testing series: The Development of IELTS: A study of the effect of background knowledge on reading comprehension. The quality of this work was recognised in the same year when she was presented with the Jacqueline A. Ross Dissertation Award.
Caroline was always generous with her time and supported people in many different ways. She regularly reviewed for academic journals, contributed to editorial advisory boards and served the International Language Testing Association (ILTA) as both Secretary/Treasurer and President. Together with her colleague Dianne Wall, she edited Language Testing Update for many years and in recognition of her outstanding service, she was awarded an honorary membership of ILTA. Caroline will remain an inspiration to the many who knew her, and especially to those who worked with her or who were taught by her. For over 20 years she advised aspiring language testers from around the world and was widely respected by her students for her supportive supervision and fair judgements as a doctoral examiner.
After her retirement, colleagues from Cambridge ESOL continued to visit her at home and she was always eager to catch up with news from the world of language testing and the events at Cambridge. Those who visited her commented on her enduring good humour and dignity in the face of deteriorating health. We are now considering ways in which we can honour and mark Caroline’s contribution to the field of language testing. All of us at Cambridge ESOL would like to extend our deepest sympathy to her husband Christopher, and to her children Phoebe and Tom.
