Meeting standards in scoring speaking: monitoring and improving the quality of examinations in Italian

This paper illustrates a specific project run by CVCL (Centro per la Valutazione e le Certificazioni Linguistiche) at the University for Foreigners in Perugia in order to identify and address inconsistencies in raters of high-stakes speaking assessment in Italian. It outlines the challenges of testing speaking and the importance of considering Quality Management process to ensure tests are valid and fair. As a part of these processes, it discusses management, training and selection of raters, and how quantitative data analysis can be used to inform decision making for positive impact.