TrueNorth

The TrueNorth Speaking Assessment has 3 sections that collect 3 types of data. It begins with a language background survey where they collect info such as test-taker’s overall language experience and previous exposure. Part 1 of the assessment utilizes elicited imitation, which is a fancy way to say listen and repeat, to get a strong and reliable prediction of oral language proficiency. It measures how efficiently the test-taker’s brain can “chunk” language information. Higher proficiency in the language enables a test-taker to process longer and more complex sentences.

The 2nd part of the assessment follows a question-answer format, collecting spontaneous responses. Part 1 data is used to determine the difficulty level for the questions asked in part 2. Test-takers have 30 seconds to read the prompt and prepare to respond, and then up to 60 seconds to respond. After part 2, the system analyzes all of the data to determine and present a score for the test-taker via a calibrated speech recognition engine that generates a polytomous partial credit score (ex. 0-3) for each item, and also provide score predictions for the ACTFL, CEFR, and other relevant scales.

TrueNorth is a suite of automated speaking assessments that utilize artificial intelligence to measure speaking ability. Plans start at $12 per assessment.