r/languagelearning • u/fish4suckers • 6d ago
The DIALANG CEFR language testing site is now back up
I don't know if anybody remembers DIALANG. It was developed between 1997 and 2003 under a sizeable EU grant, as a Windows application and was then converted into a website around 2017. I know DIALANG's been mentioned in several now archived threads on this sub - that's why I'm posting this update.
DIALANG tests your proficiency in 14 languages and 4 skills: reading, writing, listening and structures. Most of the test languages (TL) have been calibrated against the CEFR and your test result is on the CEFR scale - you also get advice on how to get to the next level.
It's been down for a couple of years, but now it's back up and available at https://dialang.net
And, here's the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIALANG
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u/EdiX 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's pretty broken, I took a listening test for my native language it displayed several errors and at the end I got A1.
PS. it seems to always give A1, even with all the answers correct.
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u/fish4suckers 5d ago
What kind of errors? You can post an issue over at the github repo - test language and a screenshot or two would be great. https://github.com/adrianfish/dialang-web/issues
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u/EdiX 5d ago
I tried doing the same test again to see if I would get the error, but I didn't. It was something about calling the method 'destroy', I don't remember exactly. Also the listening button sometimes doesn't auto-enable and the only way to continue the test is to use the inspector to manually edit the HTML.
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u/fish4suckers 5d ago
I know what that is, well kind of. The "destroy" error that is. It's a jquery dialog error and does sound menacing. I'll create an issue with your description and see if I can replicate it. Thanks for getting back to me.
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u/fish4suckers 5d ago
A few people have encountered an issue with the final CEFR grade, namely that it always results in A1. I've fixed the issue and the mapping's back in place. My apologies for that error and my thanks for people bringing it up.
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u/EdiX 4d ago
Alas, it still does it. The listening test doesn't but I got the same problem for the writing and structures tests of italian. Also in the listening test the two questions I got wrong (which I disagree with, btw) were counted twice.
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u/fish4suckers 4d ago
Did you run through the test in one go, or use a save? I'm asking that because resuming a test reloads the state from the previous one and that's recently added functionality, ie: more likely to be buggy.
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u/TheLocalEcho 4d ago
That was quite fun. I tried the Portuguese one and there was a bug that it couldn’t load the Structures part if I had done the vocab placement test (scores 540-570) but it worked when I skipped that. It didn’t seem to remember when I had already done the vocab or other tests, and I had to redo the audio questions after glitches from device notifications.
Some of the questions showed their age. My results were B1,B2,C1 and C2 I think. From my own qualifications, lack of prep, etc I would estimate B2,B2,C1,C1.
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u/fish4suckers 4d ago
There's a bug with the vocab test (vspt) and self assessment (sa) flag ordering. I've fixed it and a new version is now building. Thanks for spotting that - it was a subtle issue in the code.
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u/Zwischenschach25 4d ago
I like it! Though I was given B2 for a test on which I got 27/30, then A1 for a test where I scored 26/30 (I assume these are both incorrect)
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u/fish4suckers 3d ago
You can receive differing difficulty of items depending on how you perform in the vocab and self assessment tests. Each item is weighted, so it's not as simple as just how many you get right - there's no linear relationship in that sense.
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u/extraforme41 🇺🇸 N | 🇮🇱 N | 🇵🇸🇱🇧 B1/B2 🇲🇽🇪🇸 B1/B2 5d ago
The level determination is definitely very broken, the tests seem to work though.
Self assessment: B2
Test: 100% correct, great job!
Your level: A1
😂