I was surprised that the news that BULATS will include listening and speaking to a computer rather than a human didn’t get more reaction – although that is probably because most people are hardly aware that Cambridge has an exam that tries desperately to compete with TOEIC… Would be interested to hear people’s general reactions to the idea, though.

The way I see it, doing a speaking test without an examiner present would make testing fairer in most cases (because everyone gets exactly the same test), but more inaccurate in most cases (because it’s even further away from real communication, which is what it is supposed to be testing).