The General English Proficiency Test

                    LTTC   

Chinese

Standards of Quality

Ongoing research and rigorous procedures of test construction and administration ensure that the high quality, validity, and reliability of the GEPT are maintained. A test review published in Language Testing suggests that the GEPT is communicatively oriented, practical, and highly reliable.^* The reliability indices for the GEPT Listening and Reading tests fall between 0.87 and 0.91. The inter-rater reliability indices for the writing and speaking tests are between 0.89 and 0.90, while the discrepancy rate falls between 0.014 and 0.017.

The research and development team is responsible for writing test items, compiling test forms, and conducting research on test development. The LTTC also employs domestic and international experts as consultants, research committee members, testing committee members, item reviewers, and item writers. In order to further enhance the quality of the GEPT, the LTTC has invited five renowned scholars in the field of language testing, Prof. Charles Alderson (Lancaster University, U.K.), Prof. Lyle F. Bachman (University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.), Prof. Antony Kunnan (California State University, Los Angeles, U.S.), Prof. Tim McNamara (University of Melbourne, Australia), and Prof. Cyril J. Weir (University of Bedfordshire, U.K.), to advise the GEPT research and development team in the capacity of consultant.

Research papers and reports on the GEPT have been published in testing-related books and professional journals, as well as on the LTTC website. Research studies on validation, reliability, absence of bias, access and accommodations, administration and security, and social consequences are underway, as per Code of Fair Testing Practices in Education (Joint Committee on Testing Practices, 2004), Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education, 1999), and ETS Standards for Quality and Fairness.

In order to assist external researchers in conducting quality research on GEPT-related topics and to further enhance the reliability and validity of the GEPT, the LTTC offers the LTTC-GEPT Research Grants. Since 2011, grants have been awarded to scholars at the U.K.’s University of Bedfordshire, the University of Bristol, and Lancaster University, as well as to researchers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, for projects such as comparing the GEPT and IELTS and investigating the alignment of the GEPT and CEFR.

Read perspectives of government officials, deans of various colleges at different universities, and noted scholars in the field of language assessment and teaching.