I have chosen to analyze the ‘English language testing and certification’ product of Duolingo because academic testing is presently my field of work and of great interest to me. I’m working for the Assessment & Testing Services (ATS) at the Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver.
The recent pandemic has significantly changed the dynamics of every walk of life. Our ATS was no exception, and we had to move all testing online. Normally, we cater to our students at the admissions, accessibility, and other student learning units internally. We also host testing services for other external institutions, agencies and organizations. Of all the variety of tests we conduct, the language testing services for internal admissions and the high stakes Canadian English language proficiency tests for academic and immigration purposes, are of importance to us.
Given the sudden need for taking testing online we switched to Duolingo for sometime to serve our internal needs of admissions testing. In due consideration of the testing policies; the privacy and confidentiality concerns, it was pertinent for us to evolve means for testing online while ensuring the quality and standards of language testing.
The standardized tests that exist presently like TOEFL, IELTS and CELPIP require on site presence of the test taker. And the pandemic lockdown and the consequent safety measures and protocol rendered these tests impractical.
We currently use Duolingo as one of the tests for our evaluation of language proficiency. Hence, I attempt to analyze Duolingo’s language testing product as part of this assignment.