The European Survey on Language Competences
- Published on Saturday, 26 June 2010 10:36
The European Survey on Language Competences (ESLC) is carried out at the initiative of the European Commission, and it is aimed at providing data concerning linguistic competences of young people, comparable at the international level, and information on the effectiveness of the current methods and forms of education in each country participating in the survey.
The survey was designed by the international SurveyLang consortium, consisting of renowned institutions specialising in language skills testing, translation studies, psychometric analysis and questionnaire surveys, such as the University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations, Centre international d’études pédagogiques (CIEP), Gallup Europe, Goethe Institut, el Instituto Cervantes, the National Institute for Educational Measurement (Cito), el Universidad de Salamanca, la Universita per Stranieri di Perugia; the Centre for Assessment and Language Certification (CVCl).
As part of the ESLC survey, a randomly-selected sample of students of the final grade of junior high school will take tests in the two most frequently-taught foreign languages – in the case of Poland, it will be English and German. The survey will test three skills, i.e. listening comprehension, reading comprehension and writing. Questionnaires are designed for students, teachers of foreign languages and head teachers, respectively, concerning the social, economic and school system-related factors influencing the level and method of foreign languages teaching in the surveyed group. At the discretion of the school, the survey can be carried out in electronic or traditional paper-and-pencil examination format.
The main survey will take place in 2011. It will cover over 140 junior high schools, and 3000 students, in the whole country. A pilot survey was conducted in March 2010, to verify the quality of research tools and procedures. A total of 50 schools from the Pomorskie and Dolnośląskie Voivodeships participated in this survey.
The survey in question is anonymous. The results will only be presented in the form of collective statistical compilations. The final survey report will be published in mid-2012.
The ESCL in Poland is carried out by the Institute for Educational Research in Warsaw in cooperation with the Ministry of National Education. More information on the survey is available at www.surveylang.org (in English).
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