This article describes and analyses the development of a new test of aviation English by the Finnish Civil Aviation Authority (FCAA), as well as the overall situation in Finland as regards the testing of aviation English. The article describes the FCAA development project and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the new test and the whole testing system, often with reference to the framework of test usefulness proposed by Bachman and Palmer (1996). The quality of the overall system in Finland appears to be quite variable as it is based on the principle of decentralization, in which the FCAA evaluates and approves different tests to be used for certifying the English language skills of aviation personnel. On the other hand, the FCAA commissioned the creation of a test of its own, which appears to have certain strengths, but also has some flaws, such as a lack of systematic double rating of speaking and very little centralized monitoring of overall quality.
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Cited by
Cited by 6 other publications
Bullock, Neil & Carolyn Westbrook
2021. Testing in ESP: Approaches and Challenges in Aviation and Maritime English. In Challenges in Language Testing Around the World, ► pp. 67 ff.
Moder, Carol Lynn
2012. Aviation English. In The Handbook of English for Specific Purposes, ► pp. 227 ff.
Moder, Carol Lynn
2012. Aviation English. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics,
Oliver, Rhonda, Honglin Chen & Stephen Moore
2016. Review of selected research in applied linguistics published in Australia (2008–2014). Language Teaching 49:4 ► pp. 513 ff.
Park, Moonyoung
2020. Investigating Target Tasks, Task Phases, and Indigenous Criteria for Military Aviation English Assessment. Language Assessment Quarterly 17:4 ► pp. 337 ff.
Ringbom, Håkan
2012. Review of recent applied linguistics research in Finland and Sweden, with specific reference to foreign language learning and teaching. Language Teaching 45:4 ► pp. 490 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 september 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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