An analysis of the quality of English testing for aviation purposes in Finland

This article describes and analyses the development of a new test of aviation English by the Finnish Civil Aviation Authority (FCAA), as well as the overall situation in Finland as regards the testing of aviation English. The article describes the FCAA development project and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the new test and the whole testing system, often with reference to the framework of test usefulness proposed by Bachman and Palmer (1996). The quality of the overall system in Finland appears to be quite variable as it is based on the principle of decentralization, in which the FCAA evaluates and approves different tests to be used for certifying the English language skills of aviation personnel. On the other hand, the FCAA commissioned the creation of a test of its own, which appears to have certain strengths, but also has some flaws, such as a lack of systematic double rating of speaking and very little centralized monitoring of overall quality. Copyright 2009 Ari Huhta. No part of this article may be reproduced by any means without the written consent of the publisher.