Language assessment | British Council

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Towards building an automated scoring model for assessing appropriate use of metadiscourse markers in Aptis Writing across CEFR levels: A multidisciplinary study

Learn about our grant publication that explores the use of Metadiscourse Markers in L2 writing.

Four primary school students sit on the classroom floor listening to a female teacher.

Creating a school-child-family evaluation rubric for evaluating children's plurilingual and intercultural competence in a Catalan primary school

Through an Assessment Research Grant, this study tested a rubric to assess plurilingual and intercultural competence at a Catalan primary school.

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Investigating the washback potential of an English speaking test in the Japanese university entrance exam context

This Assessment Research Grant report is a hypothetical qualitative study investigating the potential introduction of the BCT-S, a university entrance speaking assessment, in Japan.

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Equality, diversity and inclusion: Different varieties of accents in Aptis English listening tests

This Assessment Research Grant study examines the impact of English accent varieties on test-takers' performance in Aptis listening tasks and their attitudes towards EDI in language testing.

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Speaking assessment constructs: evolution or revolution in the AI era?

Generative AI is transforming speaking assessment, shifting from static measures to dynamic, interactive tasks and redefining constructs like fluency. Join our webinar to learn more.

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The shifting landscape of English requirements: Supporting international student success in UK Higher Education

New research explores the use of English language tests in UK higher education, providing insights to optimise admissions and enhance international student success.

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Comprehensibility in language testing

Comprehensibility — how easily a listener can understand a speaker — lies at the heart of successful communication. Yet in language testing, it has often been treated inconsistently. Sometimes it’s broken down into isolated linguistic features, disconnected from real-world communication. Other times, it’s judged intuitively, based on an assessor’s general impression, without considering the listener’s role or broader context.

Four young people are sitting around a table, reading, with a teacher sitting behind them

Applying the Lexile Framework to evaluate text complexity in the Chinese context: A corpus-based study

Discover how well the Lexile Framework fits China’s English exams, and what it reveals about reading demands across the four key stages of education.

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The impact of textual features in academic journals on learner engagement

Improving sentence structure and flow, not just vocabulary, can boost how well engineering students understand academic texts

Knowledge-based Vocabulary Lists (KVL)

Discover the 5,000 words learners know best. The Knowledge-based Vocabulary Lists (KVL) were created as part of an innovative research project sponsored by the British Council.