Developing an assessment methodology for a universal maritime english proficiency test for deck officers

The paper presents the adopted approach to develop a methodology for assessing the language proficiency of Deck officers in Maritime English. The methodology design is a collaborative effort involving partners from six countries and is a core outcome of the EU-funded Erasmus + MariLANG Project. The current context of teaching and assessing Maritime English has been determined by the latest amendments (Manila, 2010) to the original International Convention on Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (IMO STCW-78 Convention). In the recently revised (2015) IMO Model Course 3.17 Maritime English the IMO recommends the assessment of communicative competence without clearly defining language proficiency levels recognised by international MET institutions. Therefore, there is a need for a standardized instrument to measure the language proficiency in Maritime English. Such a proficiency test can be used as a benchmark test against which MET institutions can compare their students. This paper will discuss the aspects to be considered during the development of test specifications and why these are useful to guide the entire process of test development to ensure a balance between different aspects of test usefulness, e.g. reliability, construct validity, authenticity, etc.