The Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) is designed to assess the target language proficiency of native speakers of English who have learned a foreign language as a second language and speakers of other languages with very strong English skills. The DLPT measures proficiency as defined by the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Skill Level Descriptions. The DLPT is designed to measure proficiency in the target language regardless of how it has been acquired; test content is not tied to any particular language-training program. The passages included in the test are sampled from authentic materials and real-life sources such as signs, newspapers, radio and television broadcasts, the Internet, etc. The passages cover a broad range of content areas, including social, cultural, political, economic, geographic, scientific, and military topics.
The reading and listening comprehension tests are based on a wide variety of realistic written and spoken materials. The content is sampled from authentic sources such as signs, newspapers, radio broadcasts, etc. The test includes multiple choice questions with four options in English. The listening and reading sections have 100 items each. Test administration time is approximately 75 minutes for the listening section
The description of expected ability, the learner is able to understand the content and intent of speech samples on general topics and/or related to workplace demands in a variety of forms and styles; the meaning and significance of the more common sociolinguistic and/or cultural references in the speech samples; speaker-intended implications, subtleties and/or nuances; speech samples tailored for difference audiences; fast speech; speech samples in a non-standard dialect and/or slang; and is able to follow unpredictable turns of thought. The skills to be assessed include non-participatory listening in the ability to understand major ideas that may be explicitly stated or be implicit in the text; draw appropriate conclusions from a speaker's remarks; understand major points supporting a line of argumentation presented by the speaker(s); understand different points of views presented by the speaker(s); understand implications conveyed by supra-segmental features (e.g., intonation, stress, etc.); understand speaker-intended implications or inferences; understand the significance of the sociolinguistic and/or cultural references or allusions or slang used by the speaker(s); understand fast speech samples; understand speech samples delivered in a non-standard dialect; and identify the intent of the speaker(s).