The challenges of scenario based language testing at university level : integrating the CLES in the Nulte context
Résumé
The Cles (Certificat en Langues de l’Enseignement Supérieur – Higher education language certificate) is a high stake certification system conceived by the will of the Higher Education Ministry in 2001. It is a multilingual certification system available for 9 languages and “ levels (B1-B2-C1). Its conception was based on the CEFR and its designers followed an action-based perspective. Recent research has shown how the CLES has exerted a positive washback effect on the language policy in French universities. If it has now become quite common to adopt an action-oriented approach for language courses, applying this perspective to an evaluation process still remains original 20 years after the first CLES exams were produced. It is believed that fewer than 10 scenario-based language certification systems exist in the world (J. Purpura). The challenges become even greater in so far as the 4 main language activities are necessarily evaluated and interconnected by a mediation process : oral and written comprehension, written and oral production
This presentation aims at defining what the construct of the CLES is and how Nulte (Network of university Language Testers in Europe), of which the CLES is a founding member, makes it possible to highlight our respective strengths and weaknesses and opens new perspectives on testing.