Resumen de Cambridge exams’ assessment: testing methodology in use of English’ rephrasing task (B2-C2)
A great variety of official certifications can be found in order to acknowledge English language competency, amongst which Cambridge’s are the most well-known. These exams consist of five sections — Use of English, Reading,Writing, Listening, and Speaking —, being Use of English a part where students are expected to show their overall control and knowledge of grammar and vocabulary in English (Cambridge Assessment English 2022). Even though extensive research has been done regarding grammar and vocabularyassessment (Brindley 2001, Purpura 2016), the truth is there is little enquiry on whether the type of exercises proposed in the forementioned section of the exam follow efficient testing methodologies. Therefore, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, to analyse the key word transformation exercise used in the Use of English part of the exam, as rephrasing can often be a particularlychallenging activity for students; and second, to verify whether the variation of difficulty among levels of competency is accurate. In order to achieve this purpose, two examples of B2, C1, and C2 levels of official Cambridge exams’ Use of English rephrasing task have been selected and rigorously analysed according to language testing-related corpora that have previously served as research for the elaboration of Cambridge exams (Cambridge AssessmentEnglish, 2022). The results indicate that the rephrasing exercise used in part 4 of Use of English has been indeed effectively arranged and structured to guarantee a correct evaluation of grammar and vocabulary. The findings also show that the language level of competency required for each part is accurate according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages–cefr. These results are discussed for further pedagogical contributions.
