Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are ALTE's aims?

As an interest grouping, the main aim of ALTE is to address issues of quality and fairness related to the examinations, which the members provide. In order to do so, they work with their stakeholders in raising awareness and in capacity building. ALTE has developed a Code of Practice and a Quality Management System (QMS) to address these concerns.

The activities, which ALTE engages in provide services to its members - especially support for meetings and conferences and the development of "tools" to improve the quality of the examinations. These tools include checklists, such as exam development and quality assurance checklists, Can Do statements, a multilingual testing terms glossary, and a Language Examining and Test Development Guide.

Many of the outcomes of the ALTE work are also publicly available, such as the twice yearly newsletter, and there are two public conferences organised each year. In 2001 an international conference was organised by ALTE in Barcelona attended by over 300 delegates and this was repeated in May 2005 with the ALTE Berlin conference.
The proceedings of the Barcelona Conference were published in 2003 as Studies in Language Testing Vol 18, CUP.

ALTE organises meetings twice a year - each in a different member country on a rotational basis. In addition, there are special interest sub-group meetings which take place regularly and which are organised according to the requirements of the sub-group members. These activities can be paid for from ALTE funds. For instance, work in the fields of testing young learners and language testing and citizenship is currently being funded this way.

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