Series | SAIL
Monograph | Rethinking English Language Certification
Chapter | What Is Certification?
What Is Certification?
The first chapter looks at how English language certification has developed over the past decade, in the light of the massive growth of English as the language of choice for international communication, and the related needs for language assessment. It shows how certification received a boost from the publication of the CEFR at the beginning of the new millenium, offering the opportunity for all boards to validate their exams in line with a common, functional based, description of language competences. Although the major international boards use quite different approaches to implement these assessments (as we shall see in later chapters), we conclude by suggesting that they nonetheless share five common objectives, by attempting to produce tests which are authentic, valid, fair, secure, and which have a positive impact.
Submitted: Oct. 2, 2017 | Published: Nov. 6, 2017 | Language: en
Copyright © 2017 David Newbold. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/6969-195-9/SAIL-12-1
