A reliable, practical test of all four skills

The Versant English Placement Test is an English proficiency test which measures the listening, speaking, reading and writing proficiency of candidates whose native language is not English. Universities, language schools, and corporate training programs around the world use the test to evaluate the ability of students and staff to understand and communicate clearly in English.

The Versant English Placement Test takes only 50 minutes and results are available online within minutes after the test is completed, allowing for quick, yet accurate placement decisions. Test questions reflect many different situations in the classroom and real world including reading aloud, conversations, dictations, summarisations, and email correspondence. Versant English Placement Tests can be taken on a computer that is installed with Pearson's Computer Delivered Testing software.

Accurate

With a 0.99 correlation, Pearson test scores generated by the Ordinate testing system are virtually indistinguishable from expert human scoring, ensuring confidence in the results.

Reliable

The Versant English Placement Test is highly reliable (split-half reliability of 0.96), delivering more consistent testing without the variability typical of multiple evaluators and locations.

Fast

The test is fully automated and can be easily taken over a phone or computer by large groups of candidates. A detailed score report is available minutes after the test is completed.

 

Sophisticated Automated Scoring Technology

With the state-of-the-art Ordinate^® testing system, tests are scored automatically within minutes. The Ordinate testing system uses speech processing technology to measure speaking and listening skills. This system was built to handle the different rhythms and varied pronunciations used by native and non-native English speakers. The testing system is able to generate scores based on the words used in the spoken responses, as well as the pace, fluency, and pronunciation of those words in phrases and sentences.

The Knowledge Analysis Technologies (KAT) engine measures written English skills and evaluates the meaning of text by examining whole written passages. The KAT engine is based on Pearson's unique implementation of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), an approach that generates semantic similarity of words and passages by analysing large bodies of relevant text. LSA can then "understand" the meaning of text much the same as a human reader.