Background

Initially, the project was implemented by the Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport (MELS) through its 2004-2008 second language action plan, when it agreed to develop, along with the Official Languages Program, a scale of second language proficiency levels and the related evaluation mechanisms. The general objective of the project was to improve the second language proficiency of college graduates, as recommended by the Commission d’évaluation de l’enseignement collégial (CEEC).

The project led to a long collaboration between the members of the coordinating committees responsible for the production of French and English tests: a large number of teachers and professionals in the French and English CEGEP networks participated in the first phase of development of the linguistic scales and items associated with the resulting tests.

In the fall of 2012, the Collegial Centre for Educational Materials Development (CCDMD) was entrusted with a new mandate to develop the second language proficiency test. In 2012-2013, the CCDMD consulted some twenty professionals and experts in the college and university networks. It set up a production team, with project managers, content specialists, programmers and technicians.

When the technical analysis was concluded, the CCDMD proposed an adaptive test model and a linguistic scale based on new criteria.