Faculty of Education Competitive Grants

Project Title: Benchmarking the University of Melbourne English Language Bridging Program

Chief Investigator: Dr Kieran O'Loughlin

Funded by: 2007 Faculty of Education Competitive Grant

Project Summary: Recently, there has been strong public debate about the equivalence of the various measures of English proficiency used by Australian universities to select international students. This project aims to benchmark the exit standards of the new University of Melbourne English Language Bridging Program (UMELBP) against the accepted entry scores on a widely-used standardized proficiency test, the IELTS. The study will strengthen the validity and reliability of the UMELBP assessments. It will also inform other national and international research which seeks to establish the equivalence between student assessments in similar direct entry English courses and standardized proficiency test scores.+