About onSET

Development

In 2004, the TestDaF-Institut began work on the development of a placement test for German as a foreign language following the C-test format. The basis for the test development was the joint research work by Dr. Thomas Eckes, TestDaF-Institut, and Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Grotjahn, Seminar for Language Teaching Research at the Ruhr University Bochum. Research findings appeared in specialist journals and books.

How a C-test works

C-tests utilise redundancy within natural language. This is achieved in the test tasks by the removal of word parts.

Verbal and written statements or sentences usually contain more information than the recipient needs to understand them. These redundancies are to be found at both the individual character and word level as well as at the sentence and clause level. In the case of an interruption in communication, for example, by noise during an announcement or illegible handwriting, understanding is impaired. Recipients with a high level of language proficiency understand what is being said (or written) even if parts of the message are incomplete or missing.

Example:

(1)    Mny universities hve cnteens. There, students and employees hve lunch, drink coffee or simply tlk.

(2)    Many _______ have _____. There, students and employees _______ lunch, _____coffee or simply ______.

In sentence (1), the letter "a" was removed from each word at the character level. Nevertheless, the statement is easy to follow. Sentence (2) is an example of a classic gap text as used in language teaching. Linguistically competent readers can fill in the gaps if they are aware of the context.

However, the removal of whole words can also cause problems if, for example, several solutions are possible:

(3)    Many universities have _______. There, students and employees have lunch, drink coffee or simply talk.

Participants are not aware of the fact that the term "canteens" is used in sentence (3). Words such as cafeterias or lunchrooms could also be entered as a solution. In such cases, filling the gap with the original word is more difficult. If the examiner only allows the original solution, only the participants with the relevent prior knowledge can find the right solution. If alternatives are allowed, this begs the question which ones are accepted and which are not.

The number of possible alternatives is reduced by the removal of word parts instead of whole words. In addition, many gaps can be generated in shorter texts, thus increasing the accuracy in the measurement of language competence.

The gaps in a C-test are usually created according to the principle "rule of two". Starting with the second sentence, the second part of every second word is deleted.
This means that different types of words have to be completed in different positions and functions.

 (4)    Many univer_____ have cant_____. There, stud_____ and emplo_____ have lun_____, drink cof_____ or simply ta_____.

The finding of the solution is facilitated through knowing the context from the title, the beginnings of the words and the first and last sentence. The more advanced the language learner, the easier it is for him or her to use existing text parts to fill in the gaps.

In order to complete a C-test properly, participants need sophisticated language knowledge and must be able to access those different areas of knowledge. This applies to knowledge of spelling, vocabulary, morphology, syntax and the semantics of the target language as well as contextual aspects.