CAA International EALT examiners

The EALT Test of Speaking can only be administered by certified EALTS examiners and assessed by certified EALTS assessors. All EALTS examiners and assessors hold relevant oral assessment qualifications combined with specialist linguistic or aviation operational expertise and are recruited as examiners by the Local Test Centres and approved by the EALTS Test Partners or by the Central EALTS Administration directly. According to their area of professional expertise (linguistic or aviation), all EALTS assessors are trained and certified in the accurate, consistent and reliable application of either the detailed ICAO analytical rating scale (describing spoken language proficiency analytically across six specified features of language at six levels) or the ICAO holistic performance descriptors (describing spoken language holistically in five statements containing the minimum criteria for operational language proficiency). All assessors are provided with clear instructions as to the extent and nature of evidence of language proficiency to be collected in support of ratings given and are committed to best practice. 1

The EALTS remote assessor pool comprises a selected group of qualified and experienced examiners from operational and linguistic backgrounds. 2 All recordings of interviews are sent to a minimum of two members of this pool for further assessment. The Central EALTS Administration manages and monitors this part of the assessment process and verifies all assessments. For the assessments of recorded interviews, examiners are allocated recordings chosen at random from the whole entry in order to ensure that in the allocation of any one examiner there is no concentration of good or weak performance or of one large centre of one country, or the predominance of any single first language candidature. A rigorous process of co-ordination and checking is carried out before, during and after the assessment process.

Ensuring fairness and impartiality, not only are the remote assessors unknown to the candidate, but they are also unknown to each other and to the examiners present at the ‘live’ interview. Ensuring validity and reliability, the multiple independent assessments offer complementary perspectives of a candidate’s language proficiency and provide a constant and continuous means of monitoring and cross-checking examiner and assessor performance. 3

Where practicable, EALT Test of Speaking examiners are organised in teams, each of which is led by a Senior Examiner. The Senior Examiner advises and supports the examiners in the team, as required. The Senior Examiner is responsible to a Regional Supervisor. Regional Supervisors are appointed by the Central EALTS Administration. Senior Examiners are appointed by the Regional Supervisor in consultation with Central EALTS Administration and local test centres.

After initial training and calibration of examiners, standardisation of marking is maintained by the multiple-assessment system, by the monitoring of recordings and monitoring visits to centres by Senior Examiners and Regional Supervisors and by further examiner co-ordination and evaluation procedures. During co-ordination procedures, examiners analyse recorded samples of the EALT Test of Speaking and conduct further practice tests with volunteer candidates in order to establish a common standard of assessment. The recorded sample tests are selected to demonstrate a range of nationalities and different levels of competence, and are pre-rated by a team of Principal Examiners (both linguistic and operational specialists) at Central EALTS Administration. 4

All EALTS assessor training, including initial and recurrent, is fully documented.

1 All EALTS examiners satisfy or exceed ICAO specified minimum professional requirements. (c.f. e.g. ICAO CD AUD 0001 Task List and Qualifications for Test Development, Management, Design and Administration Teams & EANPG Nov 06 Appendix K Recommended Qualifications for Interlocutors of Tests to Meet ICAO Language Proficiency Requirements)

2 c.f. ICAO Doc 9835 Ch.6 Aviation Language Testing 6.7 and Cir 318-AN/180 Ch.2 Test Administration and Security 4.1.2

3 c.f. ICAO Cir 318-AN/180 Ch.2 Section 3 Rating

4 c.f. ICAO Cir 318-AN/180 Ch.2 Test Administration and Security 4.1.2