“Co-certification”: a close encounter with ELF for an international examining board

Abstract

Abstract Over the last decade ELF has become a reality in European universities, but this is not reflected in the major international language tests designed for access to higher education and for university students. In this paper I describe an experiment in “co-certification,” a test of English set at level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), jointly developed by Trinity College London and the University of Ca’ Foscari Venice, in which an international version of the test was adapted locally to include locally relevant components and enhance validity and task authenticity. One feature of the co-certification was the introduction of an independent listening task which took the form of understanding an extract from a lecture given in English by a non-native speaker. Possible problems we had anticipated ranged from the kind of discourse features they should include, and whether or not there was a fairness issue related to accent recognition. In fact, the overall results showed no significant difference from the previous version of the exam, while the listening part had a higher pass rate than the overall oral test which involved interaction with a native speaker. As far as we know, the co-certification is the first example of an internationally recognized board engaging systematically with characteristic features of ELF communication, notably non-native phonology and intonation patterns, in a test of listening. The findings so far suggest that, for the test takers at least, this can be unproblematic and uncontroversial.