Revision of the language tests and UNIcert® exams (2016-ongoing)
This project focuses on aligning the achievement tests at the end of a language course, as well as the UNIcert® proficiency exams held at the Languages Centre to the learning and teaching objectives that are based on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This endeavour aims at achieving more transparency and comparability across the 21 languages we teach here.
The project takes a collaborative approach, in which teachers, course coordinators and researchers cooperate and draw on each other’s expertise.
The learning objective, our teaching approach, and hence our assessment focus on communicative activities relevant in the higher education context. We work on adaptation relevant CEFR descriptors for this context. We are currently developing test specifications, test tasks and rating scales. The new tasks and rating scales are benchmarked against the targeted CEFR levels. We aim at “marrying” proficiency-oriented learning outcomes with achievement-oriented assessment. We also listen to our students’ voices to explore how they perceive the revised test and exams.
This project is accompanied by research that we present at national and international conferences and publish in a variety of journals. Documents with regard to practical test development will be released here shortly.
All teachers, course coordinators, Sibylle Seyferth (2016-2019, and Christine Ringwald (2018-onwards) are cooperating with Claudia Harsch on this project.