It is not the first time ELT NEWS focuses on language exams and it won’t be the last. Our educational system relies on tests scores to discriminate strong and weak learners. In addition, the five or so thousand FL schools across the country function as spare parts of a huge exam machine ensuring its maintenance and existence. Personnel recruitment in the...
To take or not to take a language exam? The upcoming language exam session are just around the corner. The most common questions brought to our attention before choosing an examination body may vary depending on the “difficulty” or the “friendliness” of the exam, the recognition of the certificate, the cost, the alternative options of retaking the exam...
A test – through most teachers’ and students’ eyes – is usually a linear operation consisting of a set number of items that a student grinds through from the first item to the last. The current article describes the background to and the functioning of LanguageCert’s non-linear Test of English (LTE) ‘adaptive’ test. An ‘adaptive’ test adapts to a...
Get ready for IELTS Online, a flexible new way to take your IELTS Academic test.
English language test IELTS has announced that a secure online version of the exam will be rolled out globally in early 2022. Students around the world will soon have the ability to take IELTS Academic, a leading test of English for international higher education, from the...
“The B2 level class room can be a board game with rules but also free-will during turn taking; choices bring about outcomes of winning or losing, but most importantly, of discovering that choice is always attached to the lesson of responsibility”.
By Maria Fokas
I ask my B2 level students the same question at the start of every year, and the answers...
I have to say I am not particularly fond of exam preparation. I find that too much time is wasted trying to see whether students have reached a particular level and that not enough time is devoted in helping them to get to this level. To put it another way ‘Weighing the Pig does not Fatten it’.
So in this article, I have decided to focus instead on...
Cambridge English Language Assessment is part of the University of Cambridge and has been providing English language assessments and qualifications for over 100 years. The first Cambridge English examination, the Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE), was launched in 1913. The 12-hour exam had just three candidates, all of whom failed. One hundred...
The goal of most foreign language learners is to reach the level of independent users of the language, i.e. to be able to do things like the following:
understand at least the main ideas of authentic written and spoken texts in the target language, even when complex and abstract ideas are expressed
communicate fluently and spontaneously with...
“Look at the following pictures. I would like you to describe them for me please,” I asked as I handed the candidate the photos. As he spoke, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would have said if our positions were reversed. Some pictures are so vague, I actually feel sorry for the test takers. How long and to what extent can you describe a red balloon...
In the English Language Teaching business our most-quoted number is 100. It’s all about 100%. Of what? Of language exams success of course! Everybody has to pass. 90% is not good enough. 70% is a total failure.
Students become numbers. They are reduced to percentages. Teachers measure their teaching success based on pass rates. Schools advertise their...
