Adequacy of Assesment tools in Official English Certificates to the Guidelines provided by the Common European Framework for languagesan analysis on the effective implementation of rubrics

Abstract

The Council of Europe, through the Common European Framework of Reference for Language, Teaching and Assessment (CEFRL), has been promoting shifts in the teaching learning process, such as the communicative approach. The current doctoral thesis has analysed the exams and rubrics of the main Official Certificates in Spain to check how efficiently they have adapted the CEFR guidelines. The results of an extensive examination show that more research is needed in the field as incongruences and shortcomings have been detected. One of the most significant findings to emerge from this thesis is the verification that the certificates that must determine the learner’s competence present faults in the implementation of the basic CEFR guidelines, and they assess with rubrics which do not meet the efficiency and reliability requirements that are expected of them. Moreover, significant research limitations stem from the lack of transparency the certificates show in terms of assessment criteria, instruments and reliability data. On the other hand, this study has allowed the establishment of patterns between the assessment of the different skills and can contribute to the improvement of the evaluation process from the perspective of exam creation and rubrics design. The switch towards a more communicative assessment of the receptive skills can also be initiated with some of the basis of the current dissertation