Administering the Test

The TPLS is intended to be administered twice during a student’s college studies: once at the beginning and once before the diploma is awarded. The test manager of a subscribing college may, however, decide to use it differently. The test can be used as a placement test under certain conditions, as a test within a language course to determine group level or as a measure of the student's level compared to an expected level for certain professional careers. However, since students do not progress rapidly to a higher level of proficiency, it is not recommended they take the test repeatedly during their studies.

The management module provides an institution's test manager with all of the necessary features to manage a subscription. From this module, the manager can create groups, register respondents and define the testing schedule. The manager has access to both the overall results and detailed data. The manager can also configure the test as needed - for example, by associating linguistic scale levels with specific course numbers, reformulating certain messages, choosing whether or not to display results at the end of the test and defining the export format for results to a spreadsheet, for statistical analysis or to the institution's educational platform.

The test can be taken online from home, in class or in a lab. Students can access the test using an ID and a password sent by the test manager. The monitoring of tests administered in class or in a lab is facilitated by the fact that the test progression (the type and order of items) varies with the respondent. Similarly, the correct answer is not always in the same order in the list of answer choices.