Summary

China’s Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission have announced that they have issued a new national scale to measure the English competency of language learners this Thursday (April 12th 2018). The scale will take effect on June 1.

The new standard divides English proficiency into three levels, and has been created over a three-year period in order to unify standards assessed by the large number of different language tests offered in the country, including the College English Test for university students, the Public English Test System used by the National Education Examinations Authority (NEEA), the English language component of the Gaokao university entrance examination and many others. Another important goal was to create a standard which is more widely recognised overseas than scores from the current tests.

The standard sets out three broad proficiency levels – “basic”, “improvement” and “proficient” – each of which have three sub-categories for a total of nine different levels. The scale is application-oriented and focuses on “can-do” descriptions and covers reading, writing, speaking, listening and translation.

The new scale is not itself an examination, but will help in comparison between different existing examinations, including overseas qualifications such as IELTS and TOEFL. In addition, the National Education Examinations Authority under the MoE is working on developing a new test based on these standards, which is aimed to be finalised before 2020.

Analysis by Kevin Prest, Senior Analyst, International Education Services

The value and reliability of the new standards is likely to become clearer over the next few years, but the existence of a set of unified standards may make it easier for UK institutions to assess potential Chinese students’ English capability. This may be particularly valuable for students applying to transnational education programmes within China who are less likely to have participated in IELTS or other international examinations.

Sources

1. MoE, First national English language ability assessment standards released (in Chinese): http://www.moe.gov.cn/s78/A19/moe_814/201804/t20180413_333052.html, http://www.moe.gov.cn/s78/A19/moe_814/201804/t20180413_333068.html

2. People’s Daily, China issues new criteria to measure English competency: http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0413/c90000-9448994.html

3. Xinhua, China’s English ability proficiency scale released (in Chinese): http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/2018-04/13/c_129849570.htm

4. British Council International Education Services (January 2018), China makes progress in developing new national standards for English proficiency:  https://education-services.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/china-makes-progress-developing-new-national-standards-english-proficiency