Presentation of SELF

Since 2012, an interdisciplinary and intercultural team at Grenoble Alpes University has been working on the design and implementation of a language assessment system for formative purposes, called “SELF”. Initiated as part of the IDEFI Innovalangues project (ANR-11-IDFI-0024, 2012-2020). SELF aims to meet a national demand for formative assessment, by providing a multilingual, research-based test that assesses three skills: oral comprehension, reading comprehension and short written expression.


SELF: Formative Language Assessment System

General description

The Formative Language Assessment System (SELF) is a fully automatic, adaptive online language placement test.

The test is divided into two parts, the first part is common to all students and the second part varies according to the result obtained in the first (there are 3 levels; the sequence is done by itself, without the learner being aware of it). The transfer takes about 1 hour regardless of the level.

SELF evaluates 3 skills: oral comprehension (OC) in the form of exercises all through the oral (nothing is written), written comprehension (EC) in the form of questions for comprehension of textual documents of different genres, and short written expression (SBE) in the form of text with holes and drop-down menus.

Results

At the end of the test, SELF immediately displays a global target level or level in progress, which corresponds to the level immediately above the learner's acquired level, and therefore to the level of the group in which SELF suggests the learner enrol. SELF also gives the level acquired for each skill, i.e. a score for CO, a score for CE and one for EEC.

Users can download the results in PDF format.

A summary table of all results for each session is also available. This table contains the list of students who have taken the test, their profile information (email, institution, stream, year, any student number, reference languages, etc.), the test start date and time, the duration of the test, the target level and the scores per skill. Depending on the scenario you have chosen, we can send you the test on the dates you require (by default at the end of the session). If you wish, you can also consult/download the results at any time from your account (the administrator must give you access rights to your sessions).

List of target levels by language:

English

En route vers A1  En route vers A2  En route vers B1.1 
En route vers B1.2
En route vers B2.1 
En route vers B2.2
En route vers C1
En route vers C2

Italian

En route vers A1 En route vers A2.1
En route vers A2.2
En route vers B1.1
En route vers B1.2
En route vers B2.1
En route vers B2.2
En route vers C1

Spanish

En route vers A1 En route vers A2.1
En route vers A2.2
En route vers B1.1
En route vers B1.2
En route vers B2.1
En route vers B2.2
En route vers C1

FLE

En route vers A1.1
En route vers A1.2
En route vers A2.1
En route vers A2.2
En route vers B1.1
En route vers B1.2
En route vers B2.1
En route vers B2.2
En route vers    B2.2/C1

Japanese

En route vers A1.1
En route vers A1.2
En route vers A2.1
En route vers A2.2
En route vers B1.1
En route vers B1.2
En route vers B2.1
En route vers B2.2
En route vers C1.1 ou +

Mandarin

En route vers A1  En route vers A2.1 
En route vers A2.2
En route vers B1.1
En route vers B1.2 ou +
Published on  January 8, 2025
Updated on January 8, 2025