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    ECML colloquium 7 December 2016
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ECML colloquium, 7 December 2016.  Ensuring quality in language testing and assessment: the contribution of the CEFR


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in cooperation with the European Commission

Background

On 7th December 2016 the ECML is organising a colloquium entitled “Ensuring quality in language testing and assessment: the contribution of the CEFR”.  This one-day event will bring together several renowned experts in the field of testing and assessment to showcase the progress that has been made since the publication of the Manual for Relating Language Examinations to the CEFR, share experiences from different European contexts as well as address the challenges that remain when it comes to aligning language curricula and examinations to the Framework.

The idea for this colloquium, the first in what we hope to be a series of related events, was born from the experience of the ECML RELANG team over the three years of delivering RELANG Training and consultancy (relating language curricula, tests and assessments to the CEFR) in a total of 20 European countries. 

One of the colloquium aims will be to address 6 key questions – questions which will be presented at the beginning, referred to in the  various presentations, panel and round-table discussions, and returned to at the end. What answers can we give these important questions? Do the answers themselves lead to further questions?  How might they influence the focus of future colloquia in this area?  

The colloquium will be of particular interest to those who are responsible for or engaged in developing foreign language curricula and/or examinations, notably those who work in national curriculum or examination centres. 

Colloquium questions

  1. How do I know whether a test is at the CEFR level it claims to be at?
  2. Can an exam that tests linguistic competence (language use) be linked to the CEFR?
  3. How do we make sure that our pass/fail decisions are related to the CEFR? 
  4. Can we test at more than one CEFR level in one test?
  5. Can we link our tests to the CEFR levels even though we do not have statistics on student performance on our tests, apart from total scores?
  6. Can tests of different skills be summarized at one CEFR level?


Organiser: ECML Secretariat

Coordinator: José  Noijons (co-author of Relating language examinations to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment (CEFR) Highlights from the Manual)

Place: ECML, Graz, Austria

             

Colloquium programme