Saskia Sluiter and Erna Gille (CITO, The Netherlands) 3 June 2005 EALTA conference Voss EBAFLS : Building a European Bank of Anchor items for Foreign Language Skills

EBAFLS This project has been funded with support from the European Commission (Socrates Lingua 2 programme). Official start: 1 October 2004 Cooperation of partner institutes in eight countries: France, Germany, Hungary, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Scotland, Spain and Sweden. Coordinator of the project and partner: CITO

EBAFLS aims of the project (1) Building a European Bank of Anchor Items for Foreign Language Skills collection of items with CEF-classification skills: reading and listening foreign languages: English, French, German criteria for items: they have been used in official tests in one of the participating countries they are “culture independent” they are estimated at level B1

EBAFLS aims of the project (2) Possibility of using a subset of items as an anchor in national tests: evaluation of own tests as extension of the item bank linking to bank automatically means linking own tests to CEF Overall aims of the project: to contribute to a transparent, reliable and valid language assessment in Europe each European foreign language certificate or diploma will be comparable to any other

EBAFLS results 1)six item banks for the six language/skill combinations (French reading, French listening, English reading, English listening, German reading, German listening) 2)manual for educational instituations about use and function of the item bank 3)report on validity and reliability of the instruments and guidelines on how to enlarge the item banks and how to develop additional item banks

EBAFLS methodology eight participating countries submit items for several languages/skills based on availability of items in the countries Item Selection Committee (consisting of three persons: each is native speaker of one language, fluent in one or two of the other languages) analyzes and selects items pilot test for French reading pretest for all six language/skill combinations items in booklets: from at least two countries pretest administered in at least two countries standard setting by expert teachers teachers from all participating countries

EBAFLS work plan Currently: -collecting items from eight countries June – August 2005: -finalizing all items; ordering and storage of items September – October 2005: -pilot test: reading French March – April 2006: -pretest of all six language/skill combinations (RE fr, en, ge and LI fr, en, ge) -standard setting by expert teachers

EBAFLS work plan May – September 2006: -data cleaning and data analysis October 2006 – October 2007: -writing manual and guidelines -writing final report -final dissemination conference

Thank you for your attention.