Going Global: The Successful Link of IELTS and Aptis to China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE)

Abstract

The development of a common language proficiency scale is essential to language teaching, learning, and assessment. While some general English proficiency scales already exist, no such scale is available in an Asian context. China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE), as the first scale of its kind, promises to address this deficiency with a clear focus on the student population, grounded in the well-established framework of communicative language ability. As such, it not only illuminates the learning patterns of English language learners at different stages, but also provides a benchmark for curriculum design, student evaluation, and the improvement of educational programs. More importantly, its recent link with such international tests as Aptis and IELTS marks a significant step towards the internationalization of this scale, making student grades on different tests more comparable. The official mapping of CSE to the international examination system opens China’s education further to the rest of the world, and would facilitate student exchanges and deepen educational ties between countries in the future.