Scaling descriptors for language proficiency scales

This paper reports results from a Swiss National Science Research Council project which aimed to develop a scale of language proficiency in the form of a ‘descriptor bank’. Up until now, most scales of language proficiency have been produced by appeal to intuition and to those scales which already exist rather than to theories of linguistic description or of measurement. The intention in this project was to use an item-banking methodology to develop a flexible scale of stand-alone criterion statements with known difficulty values. The project took place in two rounds: the first for English (1994), the second for French, German and English (1995). In each year pools of descriptors were produced by analysing available proficiency scales. Through workshops with representative teachers, the descriptors were then refined into stand-alone criterion statements considered to be clear, useful and relevant to the sectors concerned. Selected descriptors presented on questionnaires were then used by participating teachers to assess the proficiency of learners in their classes. This data was used to scale the descriptors using the Rasch rating scale model. The difficulty estimates for the descriptors produced in relation to English in 1994 proved remarkably stable in relation to French, German and English in 1995.