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DIALANG is a European project for the development of diagnostic language tests in 14 European languages. Tests will be made available on the Internet free of charge. The project is financially supported by the European Commission, Directorate General Education and Culture, under the SOCRATES Programme, LINGUA Action D.

The DIALANG project was launched on 1 December 1996 from within the Conseil Européen pour les Languages / European Language Council and the Thematic Network Project in the Area of Languages (01/09/96-31/08/99). Phase 1 of the project, which was co-ordinated by Jyväskylän yliopisto (FI), was successfully completed on 30 November 1999. Phase 2, which builds on the results and outcomes of Phase 1, started on 1 December 1999 and is expected to last until 30 November 2001. Phase 2 is co-ordinated by the Freie Universität Berlin (DE).

From its very beginning, DIALANG has been supported by the European Commission under the EU's education programme SOCRATES (LINGUA Action D). It is linked to a number of aims pursued by the Commission in the field of education, among them:

• to enable European citizens to have their skills and knowledge assessed and recognised outside formal qualification systems
• to promote the learning of languages
• to stimulate the production and use of ICT products and services for teaching and learning purposes
• to promote lifelong learning
  

(cf. White Paper: Teaching and Learning - Towards the Learning Society; Communication: Towards a Europe of Knowledge)

DIALANG is developing diagnostic tests in 14 European Languages, including the 11 official languages of the European Union:

Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish

as well as Icelandic, Irish, and Norwegian

The DIALANG project is a new and unique European venture. It makes use of state-of-the-art developments in both language testing and pedagogy and in ICT and it has a distinct European perspective, developing tests in a large number of European languages, among them less widely used and taught languages, and incorporating them into a framework developed for Europe - the Council of Europe's Common European Framework of reference.