At Cambridge ESOLs printing and distribution facility
over five million exam papers are stored at any one time
with hundreds of thousands of papers being sent out
every month.
We have more than three million candidates every year taking
our exams in around 130 different countries.
So the question paper production is an ongoing process on a massive scale.
Before the question papers are delivered to candidates and to ensure their quality
reliability and validity
an in-depth development and quality management process takes place.
We employ a huge number of experts many of them
are permanent members of staff.
These people are experts in language assessment.
They have qualifications in linguistics, education and testing.
We also have a large number of external consultants.
They work as question paper writers we call item writers.
It starts off with a commissioning letter and then you
write your paper and submit it.
The next thing that happens is that you get your pre-editing feedback
In a pre-editing meeting the assessment manager
along with the chair of the paper and usually one other objective external
consultant will come in
have a look at the tasks in the questions and check their suitability.
Sometimes I get involved in pre-editing meetings myself
obviously not pre-editing my own material but
pre-editing material that other people have submitted.
They'll also check for things like
the suitability of the language we're using.
And as an item writer you then respond
to the criticism and suggestions.
Item writers will be given the opportunity to tweak their tasks
make them as good as they can be for the next stage which is the editing meeting.
You meet with the other members of the team and the questions are finalised.
Again they're looking for things like do the tasks work?
Are they appropriate? Are they at the right level?
Once they are happy with all of the questions and all of the tasks
pre-test question papers containing those
edited questions and tasks are distributed around the world,
where they are taken by the same kinds of language learners
who take live Cambridge ESOL exams.
The students take the pretest under exam conditions.
It's a very comprehensive stage in the process
and allows us to get the statistics on the exams
that help us to ensure that they are reliable
that they are valid and they test what we say they are going to test.
Once the pre-tests have been analyzed specialists have a look at the
questions and tasks alongside the statistics that have been generated.
And it's only when they are entirely happy
with the level at which the questions and tasks have been set
that they are ready to be included in a live question paper.
Finally the question papers are ready to be printed in a secure environment
and sent out all over the world, or loaded onto a computer based platform
for secure delivery.
Our high level of expertise in language assessment and in the question paper
production process means that our exams are recognised by
thousands of institutions, government bodies,
schools and colleges around the world as being the best.
Every question paper that we produce adheres to
what can be found in the handbook for teachers.
These documents are available for free on our website
along with a huge amount of materials for teachers, candidates
and anyone who's involved in language testing.