Are Pipplet tests adaptive?

We have heard a lot about adaptive testing in recent years in the field of language assessments. What is an adaptive test, what is the purpose of this technology and do Pipplet tests benefit from it?

The Quantitative Approach: A Historical Choice

There are two main methodologies for assessing foreign language competence: the quantitative approach and the qualitative approach.

The quantitative approach is used in tests with multiple-choice questions (MCQs). In this type of test, the candidate's level is extrapolated from his or her answers to a series of closed-ended questions. The candidate's ability to understand, write, and speak is deduced from his or her binary answers: the correct box is ticked or not. This type of test has the advantage of greatly simplifying the requirements for taking the test, since the candidate is not asked to speak or even write often, but simply to tick boxes. They are also very economical because the correction can be automated. This explains the great popularity of these tests, especially in the last century when paper and pencil were the most popular. The major disadvantage of these types of tests is that they require a large number of questions in order to produce a statistically valid result. MCQ tests, therefore, require a minimum of 1h30 from the candidate and several hundred questions, which makes them very tedious to take.

Adaptive Tests, an Improvement made possible by New Technologies.

Faced with this problem of size, or rather of duration, the arrival of new technologies has made it possible to introduce an improvement: adaptive tests. An adaptive test is a test that selects the next questions to be taken according to the answers given to the first ones. Has the candidate answered all the previous questions correctly? He or she is offered more difficult questions. Did the candidate fail to answer the first questions? Simpler questions are suggested. The test "adapts" to the candidate's level, which allows for more relevant questions and thus reduces the length of the test. This mechanism, which was introduced with the changeover from MCQ tests to computerized tests, has made it possible to reduce the length of the tests to 1 hour or a little less. This makes the tests more bearable.

Adaptability does not Solve all Problems

The Qualitative Approach

Qualitative assessment is simply the evaluation of skills in situations, directly by one or more assessors. It is the approach historically favored when a high-quality assessment is required, as it allows a very fine assessment of the overall foreign language skills. It is found in tests such as the TOEFL or IELTS in English, or the DCL for French. The assessment generally takes the form of a 15-minute interview with one or more examiners, who will listen to the candidate and assess his or her level directly in a qualitative manner. Since this method of assessment is direct and based on the actual production of the candidates, it is both much more accurate and much quicker, since 15 minutes of discussion is sufficient to assess the candidate. There is therefore no need to use an adaptive mechanism with this method: it is the examiner who makes a direct assessment of the candidate's level. 



While this method of qualitative assessment has many advantages, it also has drawbacks: it is difficult to set up for many candidates, it forces candidates to travel, and it is expensive: 255€ for TOELF and 235€ for IELTS. Moreover, these new technologies allow us to change the situation and to keep the advantages of this method while avoiding the disadvantages. This is what Pipplet does with its asynchronous testing solution available online 24 hours a day and for only a fraction of the price of traditional tests.