A learner who chats confidently in class can look like a B1 speaker. But the B1 descriptor also expects learners to express opinions, support them with reasons, and talk about future plans and ambitions. Performing confidently in conversation isn’t the same as meeting the descriptor — and the gap between the two is where the real assessment challenge lies.
Closing this gap means grading fluency, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and task achievement simultaneously. That’s demanding with a single learner. For a whole cohort, it’s rarely realistic.
The Dynamic Speaking Test combines decades of human experience in language assessment with AI built to deliver CEFR test results. Linguists and assessment specialists have calibrated the system against thousands of human-rated samples, so every result is reliable, fair, and aligned with the CEFR.
DST gives you clear, CEFR-aligned data on the speaking level of every student – and of the cohort as a whole. With that picture in front of you, you can make more informed curriculum decisions.
“What did surprise other colleagues who aren’t English specialists was the sheer number of lower-level English pupils we had, particularly in grade nine and the sixth form.”
– Abigail Cutts, Head of English, Wellington College International Hangzhou
Once you’ve established a baseline, DST lets you regularly re-measure the whole cohort in just 30 minutes – and because every result maps to the same CEFR descriptors, the comparison is genuinely like-for-like. Continuous, objective assessment of speaking stops being an aspiration and becomes a real option.
If your students are working towards IELTS or a comparable exam, they usually know where they need to get to – IELTS 6.5, say. What they often don’t know is where they’re starting from. DST puts a pin in the map, and its communicative, task-based format mirrors the skills the exam itself will test.
The Dynamic Speaking Test pinpoints a learner’s level from A1 to C2. It’s built by ClarityEnglish, with 30+ years in digital English learning and testing, using test content from a team of assessment specialists.
Teacher-led tests are time-consuming and hard to scale. The Dynamic Speaking Test (DST) uses AI to deliver results that show the same level of accuracy as a panel of expert human markers – in a fraction of the time, and at a fraction of the cost.
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