Tracciare la competenza linguistica in italiano L2: cosa ci rivela SELF in Comprensione Orale

This paper presents the results of a study on the Italian placement test SELF (Système d'Evaluation en Langues à visée Formative) conducted for the first time on a large sample of candidates who were tested at several university institutions in France. After a careful contextualization and presentation of the characteristics of the reference sample, we pay particular attention to the analysis of the listening comprehension tasks, the observation of the relationship between the construct and the psychometric values obtained. This analysis is conducted with a twofold purpose: on the one hand, to identify some common traits in the tasks that contribute most to the proper functioning of the test and the discrimination of candidates; and on the other hand, to question the reasons for the presence of unsatisfactory psychometric values in some tasks. The questions arising from this analysis make it possible to draw a few conclusions on the editorial quality, format, and on the focus of the items and provide some insights into orientations related to the formative and diagnostic SELF dimensions of the listening comprehension tasks.