Language Assessment
User Guide
Learn languages with OLS
Introduction
Welcome to the OLS language assessment user guide. In this document, you will discover how to log in, take the language assessment, and receive your results on the OLS platform. This guide will help to ensure that your language assessment result reflects your language level in which you are going to work, or study in during your mobility period.
Access and log into the OLS Platform
Before you can access the OLS language assessment, you will need to activate your user account. You should have received an automated invitation e-mail containing containing a link. Click on this link to activate your account. Just follow the link provided in the e-mail to activate your account, then connect via https://app.erasmusplusols.eu.
If you can’t remember your password, click on the “Forgot your password?” link.
Complete your OLS profile
Once you’ve logged in, you will be asked to edit your profile and complete it with your personal information. Fields marked with a red asterisk * are mandatory.
If you would like to modify the password, complete the “New Password” field and then confirm it in the “New Password Confirmation” field.
Before clicking on "Save these modifications", please read the 'Legal Notice' on data protection. You must accept the data protection and data privacy terms before saving your profile, otherwise you will be unable to proceed.
Once you have completed your profile, click on “Save these modifications” to continue.
Complete your OLS Mobility Profile
Once you have completed your personal profile, you will be asked to further edit your profile by filling in some details about your Erasmus+ or European Solidarity Corps mobility. Fields marked with a red asterisk * are mandatory.
The language of the assessment you are going to take, indicated under the label “Language to test”, has been selected by your sending institution/organisation as the main language of instruction or work for your mobility period. You cannot modify this field. If you believe this language is incorrect, please stop completing your profile and contact your sending institution/organisation immediately.
Additionally, you need to update the dates of your mobility period. The estimated dates of mobility are important as they determine the date of your final language assessment. Please pay particular attention to the return date, and note, that your mobility cannot exceed 13 months.
Please also enter the time zone in which you will be studying or working during your mobility. Your time zone may become important at a later stage for the live coaching activities available on the platform (if you are selected by your sending institution/organisation to attend the OLS online language course).
Once you’ve completed your mobility profile, you will be invited to take part in a new mobility. Click on “add mobility” to add this mobility to your OLS account.
You will then be given the possibility of following an OLS language course in the local language(s) of your destination country.
Please note that the local language only concerns the language courses, not the language assessment. Therefore, your final language assessment will be in the same language as your first language assessment since this is your main language of instruction/work.
Please note that you need to complete your personal profile, as well as your mobility profile, before starting the language assessment.
Access the OLS language assessment
Once you have completed your profiles, an introductory text to the language assessment is displayed. If you need to modify your personal profile, click on "Edit my profile", in the top left corner of the screen.
You may find one, or several mobility boxes on this page (depending on whether you have multiple mobilities). The mobility boxes are sorted chronologically from the most recent to the oldest. You can edit your mobility profile by clicking the edit icon 
to the upper right.
There are a number of different buttons on the welcome page:
- By clicking on “Start my first language assessment” inside your mobility box, you can start your first assessment.
- After taking your first language assessment, the results will be displayed on the left side of your mobility box. By clicking on “Results”, you will find a more detailed analysis on the results of your language assessment.
- On the right side of your mobility box, you will find a notification informing you of when your final language assessment will be available. Once it is available, you will be able to start it by clicking on the button labelled “Start my final language assessment”. You are required to complete this final language assessment at the end of your mobility, in order to check the progress made in your language competence during your stay abroad. There is no difference between the first OLS language assessment (prior to mobility) and the final OLS language assessment (at the end of your mobility). The questions may be different as the assessment is adaptive. Since both assessments are based on the same principles, the improvement you made during your mobility period can be measured.
- At the end of your mobility period (as indicated in your mobility box), you can access your record of participation by clicking on "My record of participation" for the OLS language course.
The system will test your audio configuration. Click on "Click to listen" to check if your loudspeakers or headphones play the audio sample correctly. (Please make sure your speakers are turned on).
You should click on "Yes" if the sound test worked. In the event that the audio test failed you should click on "No" and another message will appear with a list of actions to take to set up the audio.
After clicking on "Yes", and then, on "continue", you can start your language assessment.
Take the OLS language assessment
The average time taken to perform the assessment is 30 to 35 minutes. However, there is no time limit and you may take as long as you wish to complete this assessment.
These different test sections aim to evaluate your communicative competence as well as your grammatical, lexical and spelling skills in an integrated manner.
If you have to quit the language assessment at any time, or if you experience a technical problem while taking the test, you will be able to re-start it from the beginning of the section you were at previously. Keep in mind that once you have selected your answer and clicked on "continue", you will not be able to go back to the previous question. If you don’t know the answer to a question, click on “continue” and carry on with your assessment without selecting an answer.
Grammar
The first section assesses your grammatical competence. This grammar section includes two types of exercises: multiple-choice and open gap-fill questions, and contains 20 questions.
The example below shows a multiple-choice question in which you have to choose the right option from a list of terms by clicking on the small circle beside each option. Then, you click on "continue" to move to the next question.
In the top right corner of the screen, you can view the difficulty level of each question: it will increase or decrease in complexity to suit your language level. The system starts, by default, with a question situated at level A2 (CEFR). At the bottom of the page, you can check the progress of your assessment. Each filled cell indicates the number of questions you have answered, while the progress bar shows the 4 sections you will have to complete to finish your assessment.
Vocabulary
The second section evaluates your lexical competence and consists of 15 questions. Like the previous section, you will have to answer multiple-choice and open gap-fill questions, by choosing the right word/s (noun, adjective, verb, pronoun, or preposition), phrase, or expression in the given context.
Listening comprehension
The third section, consisting of 10 questions, assesses your listening comprehension skills. Each question is based on an audio extract. You can check the audio quality on your device by clicking on the speaker icon on the right-hand side of the introductory screen. To listen to the track, click on the speaker. You will be able to listen to each audio extract twice.
We advise that you read the question and possible answers at least once before listening to the audio extract. Each question is a multiple-choice question based on a short dialogue or monologue. For example, the transcript for the question below is: "Speaker: Jim, how long do you spend on the computer every day? - Jim: usually 4 hours during the week but I don't work on it at the weekend":
Or you will simply have to identify a word or a phrase used in the dialogue as shown in the two screenshots below:
You might be asked to identify the communication context of a conversation, indicated by a series of elements (dial tone, the type of language used: "Charles speaking", etc.):
Reading comprehension
The final section, consisting of 10 questions, evaluates your ability to understand a written text. The type of text presented will depend on the level of difficulty of the question, and they can include: newspaper article excerpts, advertisements, letters, emails, or literary passages.
Results of the Language Assessment
After you have completed all 4 sections of the assessment, you will receive a detailed analysis of your performance as shown in this result page here below:
On the upper left-hand part of the screen, your overall language level is indicated according to the CEFR, along with a brief description of the level obtained. The illustration on the right-hand side indicates where you currently are on your language learning journey.
In the centre of the page, you can see more detailed feedback for each language competence.
By clicking on "Save and print your evaluation report" you will be able to print out a screenshot of your assessment results.
You will also be able to download a PDF file of your results on your welcome page by clicking on the “My first language assessment results” button, situated at the top of the page. Please also keep in mind that you cannot repeat your language assessment once you have completed it and received your results. We also recommend that you update your CV with your recent language level.
Only you and the institution/organisation in charge of your selection or coordinating your volunteering project will receive the results of your language assessment. For Higher Education students and trainees, results will not be communicated to the receiving institution/organisation. For Erasmus+ volunteers and VET learners, results will not be communicated automatically to other organisation(s) in the project.
The results of the OLS language assessments do not prevent anyone from taking part in the Erasmus+ or European Solidarity Corps mobility programmes. Results may be used by the sending institution/coordinating organisation to identify the participants most in need of linguistic support.
At the end of your Erasmus+ or European Solidarity Corps period, you are required to complete another language assessment to check the progress made in your language competence during your stay abroad. On your welcome page, you will find a notification informing you of when your final language assessment will be available.
Once it is available, you will be able to start it by clicking on the “Start my final language assessment” button at the top of your home page. There is no difference between the first OLS language assessment (prior to mobility) and the final OLS language assessment (at the end of your mobility), however the questions may be different as the assessment is adaptive. Since both assessments are based on the same methodology, the improvement you made during your mobility period can be measured.
You will be able to download the PDF file of your final language assessment results by clicking on the “My final language assessment results” button, located on your welcome page.
There are no negative repercussions if your language level has not changed during your Erasmus+ or European Solidarity Corps mobility programme.
The European Commission may use aggregated data of language assessment results for statistical purposes.
Support
If you encounter problems while you are taking the language assessment, contact our technical support team by clicking on “Report a problem” in the upper right-hand corner at any time during the language assessment. If you encounter any problems while you are taking the language assessment on the OLS app, please quit the assessment and contact our technical support team by clicking on “Report a problem”.
Good luck with your OLS language assessment!