Can the CEFR assess University Students in a China-based British University? A case study at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China

The University of Nottingham Ningbo China is an English-medium university that, within the Language Centre, offers its students the opportunity to study an additional foreign language (French, German, Japanese, Spanish) up to the level B1. Despite the introduction of the ELP and gradual alignment of the curriculum to the CEFR, when it was time to align the examinations set up by our University to the CEFR some issues arose. The format of our exam papers is consistent with the programme developed and focus on the intellectual and transferable skills involved. The marking criteria are designed for assessing not only the language, but also the intellectual ability of the students to organize their discourse.
This study is a first step of a reflection on how and to what extent CEFR criteria can be integrated in or replace the HE marking criteria and what kind of changes in the our pedagogy this would involve. As practitioners, this study is a comparison of marks obtained by students taking oral, written, listening and reading test according to the CEFR (DELF A1) and our university marking criteria.