Implications of employing performance-based testing in a university context

The issue that this paper addresses is the employment of performance-based testing in a university context, in particular, at the Sapienza University of Rome. The matter is addressed by aiming at designing a performance-based test of the English language. In particular, the issues addressed are: 1) the feasibility of employing a theoretical model of English language knowledge, the Bachman and Palmer one (Bachman and Palmer, 2013) to assess student knowledge, 2) test validation within the university context, 3) the feasibility of employing such a test at the Sapienza University taking into account practical implications (cost-effectiveness, rater training, etc). To gather data, a questionnaire on personal data as well as two written tasks were designed accompanied by holistic and analytic rating scales based on the model and the CEFR B2 illustrative descriptors.