Revisions to the Advanced Level Certificate in English (ALCE™) Examination

Hellenic American University is pleased to announce that the Advanced Level Certificate in English (ALCE™) has been revised, with the first administration of the revised examination taking place in January 2022.

The revisions of the ALCE™ are designed to reflect current methodology and practice in English language testing and the range of items included in the examination has been broadened so that it tests language competency at both C1 level and C2 level.

The ALCE™ continues to test communicative competence in all four skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as tasks which test grammatical resources. However, there is now no separate vocabulary section, as vocabulary resources are tested through all tasks in all sections. As a result, the Grammar, Vocabulary, and Reading (GVR) section has been renamed the Reading and Use of Language (RUL) section.

All items in the Listening section and the Reading and Use of Language (RUL) section continue to be in multiple-choice format, but the number of items in the test has been reduced to provide a more efficient instrument to assess language competency, with 30 items in the Listening section and 50 items in the Reading and Use of Language section. In the RUL section, the single-sentence grammar and vocabulary items of the previous format have been replaced by items which provide candidates with more real-life context and language.

The Writing and Speaking sections remain similar to the previous format, except that more time is given for the Writing section, and the Speaking section now has only three tasks instead of four.

Candidates who obtain a scaled score of 55 or more out of 100 in the examination overall receive a Certificate at C1 level, while high-scoring candidates who achieve a scaled score of 74 or more out of 100 are awarded a Certificate at C2 level.

A detailed description of the revised ALCE™ will be made available shortly, together with a sample test.