Language Screening at Scale

There are many existing high-stakes, multi-hour language tests that are accepted by employers and universities as proof of language proficiency. There’s TOEFL and IELTS for English, DELE for Spanish, and so on. But these tests are expensive to create, time-consuming for test takers, and costly to administer.

A language test doesn’t need to take an hour or cost hundreds of dollars to be reliable. A well-designed test can provide a reliable approximation of a person’s language proficiency in just a few minutes—reliable enough to make low-to-mid-stakes decisions.

Beginning with research-proven testing concepts, we have developed a test to do just that. Our screening test is both reliable and particularly well suited for high-volume low-to-mid stakes testing because it:

• can be issued and taken on demand
• can be completed in minutes, rather than hours
• is delivered online and instantly scored
• is valid and reliable at closely approximating proficiency (CEFR scale)
• is easy and affordable to administer at scale

In this paper, we will explore the test format, including the research concepts upon which the test sections are based, and the results of our own validation research.