Project teams of ETS test developers, researchers, and external language testing experts have produced initial framework documents for assessing reading, writing, listening, and speaking as both independent and interdependent skills. A compilation of research and development reports is available in a monograph series that can be ordered online through the Web site store . Prototyping trials of test tasks, item types, and scoring rubrics are currently being carried out. The trials will provide evidence of the redesigned test's measurement claims and purpose. This effort will be followed by further trials during which performance definitions will be refined at the test-form level.
Institutions can now obtain scores faster, an advantage they have long sought.
This initiative has not been undertaken casually. Today, the growing popularity of distance learning has raised the prospect of global testing. This prospect will achieve fruition with developments in such technologies as information security, encryption, and transmission speed. Thus, the day when ETS assessments are delivered via the Internet may be imminent. In 1996, the development of the very large pools of test items needed to deliver a computer-based test worldwide began.