Abstract

The Program of Spanish as a Foreign Language at Universidad de Concepcion (ELE-UdeC) quarterly teaches courses to exchange students studying in this university. The level expected by the institution corresponds to a B1 level as per the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In this context, it is necessary to assess the level of proficiency of students in order to place them in appropriate courses, and thus organize balanced groups in terms of their language level. In this paper, we present research aimed to generate a Level Test with two equivalent forms: Form A and Form B to evaluate the B1 level of proficiency in Spanish as a FL. The different phases considered in making a placement test as proposed by Bordon (2006) are described and then the results of the pilot phase are presented, in which we evaluated the performance of the instrument in two versions. The study was conducted between 2011 and 2013 and involved 50 students from different L1 and nationalities. There were two specific objectives of this research: 1) to design a B1 placement test for SFL with two equivalent forms, and 2) to evaluate the performance of the test forms A and B to measure the proficiency level corresponding to B1. For this purpose, the two versions were applied to two sample groups. The results allow us to visualize that the two versions of the instrument have been adequate to measure the B1 proficiency level.