This project explored the interests and needs relating to language assessment of a group of (potential) test score users.
Through in-depth interviews, the researchers engaged with representatives of bodies for professional registration in the UK to investigate how they understood and, in many cases, applied English language proficiency requirements, tests and test scores. The aim was to provide a better understanding of these test users’ interests and concerns, consequently allowing language testing professionals to consider how they might communicate more effectively with staff members at registration bodies about their use (or not) of tests of English as a second/foreign language in pathways to professional registration and offer support in decision-making on this topic.
Some of the registration bodies, particularly in the healthcare sector, used commercial English language tests as part of their registration processes. Other bodies did not usually use language tests to provide evidence of satisfactory English language and communication skills but, instead, relied on applicant performance in tests of professional knowledge and skills or in interviews and written application forms submitted as part of the registration process. Registration body representatives all acknowledged the importance of satisfactory language and communication skills for registrants in the professions they oversaw. Having them was viewed as part of a professional responsibility to be an effective and safe practitioner.
Overall, the registration bodies were confident in the approach they took to confirm these skills, whether using commercial language tests or less overt methods. Commercial language tests were seen to deal efficiently with a complex decision on behalf of the registration bodies. Direct tests of language were generally required only for applicants whose education and professional training was completed outside the UK. Applicants trained in the UK were assumed to have the language and communication skills required to operate in an English-language workplace. Registration bodies tended to trust test providers to convince them of the quality of a test, and they paid more attention to practical aspects of this than to construct-related aspects.
Several interviewees were keen to establish a more transparent and robust procedure to follow to evaluate new language tests for use. They were conscious of the importance of this task, the resources required to do it well, and the need for an independent view of the suitability of a test for a specific workplace context. The provision of templates providing a framework to review a new test or evaluate current practice would therefore respond to needs expressed by interviewees in the study. Developing such a framework might be carried out as a collaboration between a registration body and language testing professionals.