QALSPELL- Quality Assurance in Language for Spetcific Purposes

What is QALSPELL?

The project seeks to establish, with the help of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, unified criteria for quality assurance and assessment in learning and teaching Foreign Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) at tertiary-level educational institutions of the pre-accession countries with the aim of contributing to mutual recognition of university degrees and development of credit transfer systems, thereby promoting mobility of students and professionals and the free movement of labour force within Europe.

It will make use of the experience gained by the teams of teachers from higher educational establishments in the British Council ESPELL project (ESP-Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania: 1998-2000), which dealt with English for Specific Purposes (ESP) syllabus and materials design and also the expertise of the testing project groups who designed the Year 12 state examination for secondary school leavers of the three Baltic States, carried out by the initiative and with the help of the British Council. It will also draw on the experience of experts from the University of Reading, the United Kingdom, Szechenyi Istvan University, Hungary, and PROSPER ASE Language Centre, Romania, who have experience in writing ESP examinations.

The examination requirements and assessment criteria of the different tertiary-level educational institutions of the countries will be examined in relation to the real working environment and a needs-analysis carried out. Techniques and procedures for setting up a common LSP testing framework will be elaborated using the Year 12 examination, the Hungarian project experience ("Testing across different specialisms: developing a common approach") and the idea of the European Language Portfolio as a starting point.

As a result a framework of unified skills-based LSP exams and tests will be worked out for the tertiary-level educational institutions of the pre-accession countries. It will have clearly stated can-do level descriptors for skills applicable to different work situations.

It will also be possible to use the framework for creating quick specific language proficiency tests for employment purposes in companies and enterprises. The procedures for this will be tried out and needs analysis carried out in the partner company AS Tallinna Küte and some other companies.

The pre-accession partner countries' Ministries of Education will be kept informed about the progress of the project and involved at a later stage. The ownership of the project by the ministries is important for the framework to be nationally recognised and for the language policy makers to become fully aware of their responsibility to invest in languages, if their respective countries are to enjoy equal opportunities with ll the other members of the European Union.

Partners from the EU countries will be able to share and compare their experience, disseminate their knowledge and learn about the different cultural and educational traditions of the pre-accession countries. The University of Reading will work out a module for training language teaching professionals on testing and assessment procedures in line with the Common European Framework of Reference, which they will be able to market in the future.

Tallinn Technical University, the promoting organisation of the project, has a history of good working contacts with the majority of the partner organisations via a number of previous projects.