An innovative computer assisted proficiency test of English for academic purposes

A description is given of the CAPTEAP system that generates English proficiency tests (EPTs) automatically. Because the work is targeted at non-native, graduate students who need to develop technical writing skills, CAPTEAP tests the student's ability to understand and produce technical writing in English, also helping him/her develop the schemata for the academic discourse. For this reason the system was based on the Support Tool from the AMADEUS environment, which was developed for training students to write scientific papers. Computationally CAPTEAP was implemented on top of the Support Tool and the Hot Potatoes suite, thus allowing formative tests to be generated for researchers of Physics. When the package to generate summative tests is completed, we hope CAPTEAP to become a fully-fledged system for improving standardization and the accuracy of automatically generated EPTs. The advantage in comparison to conventional tests lies in the assessment of relevant skills graduate students really need throughout their academic career.

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