During the week of 18-22 September 2023, the Language Centre of the University of Defence organized a workshop of the Testing Working Group of the Central European Defence Cooperation (CEDC) Language Platform. The workshop, which took place on the premises of the University of Defence Club in Brno, was organized as part of this year’s Czech Presidency of the CEDC. The CEDC Language Platform brings together the departments responsible for language training and testing of the armed forces of the CEDC member countries, i.e. Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and, last but not least, the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic, specifically the UoD Language Centre, is the lead country of the CEDC Language Testing Working Group. The aim of this working group is to contribute to improving the quality and credibility of language testing, as well as to support the sharing and increasing of national capacities in language testing, incl. the training and international mobility of testers (evaluators).

The participants of the Brno workshop comprised managers and senior experts in the field of language competency testing, development, and validation of language tests. During the workshop, in addition to refining activities for the next period and discussing approaches to sharing and exchanging evaluators, a framework for joint evaluator workshops was drawn up. A norming session for the assessment of language competences in English for levels 1 to 3 according to NATO STANAG 6001 formed an important part of the workshop.