Validation of the C-test amongst Hungarian EFL learners

Abstract

This article reports on the results of a research programme carried out to validate the C-test amongst Hungarian EFL learners. One hundred and two university English majors were administered four different language tests (including an oral interview) to form a General Language Proficiency measure against which the C-test was evaluated. Various analyses were made, partly to replicate the results of the earlier studies to see to what extent these could be generalized, and partly to shed light on controversial issues. The same C-test was then administered to four groups of secondary school pupils (N=53) to examine whether the findings amongst university students were also true in another proficiency range. The results of the programme confirmed that the C-test is a reliable and valid instrument, and detailed information was obtained about issues such as text difficulty and text appropriateness, the role of content and structure words, and the use of different scoring methods.