An online English proficiency test is an English test that a student takes at home on a computer, while software and human proctors watch the session through the webcam. Many universities abroad accept it as proof of English for admission. The best-known one is the Duolingo English Test. Older tests, such as IELTS and TOEFL, are mostly taken at a test centre.
Why do students need such a test? A university that teaches in English needs proof that each student can follow lectures and write assignments in English. Indian students who apply for a degree abroad usually have to send an English test score with their application, even if they studied in English.
Consider a final-year engineering student in Vadodara who is applying for master's programmes in data science. She books the test online and pays about ₹6,000. This costs much less than a centre-based test, and she does not have to travel. On the test day, the software checks her webcam, her microphone and her screen. It asks her to show the whole room with the webcam. It then records her face, her voice and her screen for the entire test. This watching is called online proctoring. If she looks away from the screen too often, or if another voice is heard in the room, her result can be cancelled.
The test is adaptive. It starts with a question of medium difficulty. If she answers correctly, the next question is harder. If she answers wrongly, the next one is easier. This is adaptive learning applied to a test. The questions quickly settle at her level, so a test of about one hour can measure what a fixed paper would need much longer to measure. The test covers reading, listening, writing and speaking. She completes words with missing letters, types sentences that she hears, writes a short answer and describes a picture aloud for a minute. Software scores most answers, and speech AI helps score the speaking.
After the test, human proctors review the recording, helped by software that marks the moments they should check. Within two days, she receives a score of 125, on a scale from 10 to 160. She sends it to five universities. Each university sets its own minimum score. One of them asks for at least 120, so her score is enough.
The test is run by the company behind a language learning app, but the two do different jobs. The app teaches English a little every day. The test measures a student's English once, for an admissions office.