In this article, we wish to address the evaluation of lexical knowledge in the SELF system (System of Evaluation in Languages for Formative Purpose), developed within the framework of Innovalangues project. SELF is an automatic and adaptive test based on CEFR. Designed as a positioning tool, it can also be used as a formative assessment device, making it possible to measure progress and identify learners' difficulties, in the three targeted skills (oral comprehension, written comprehension, short written expression).

The lexical competence assessment in SELF Mandarin took into account two dimensions: knowledge of vocabulary (spoken and written) on one hand, character recognition on the other. We thus decline lexical competence in several points, ranging from oral word recognition and character recognition through knowledge of the relationship of the meaning of the word with other words (synonymy, antonymy, hypo/hyperonymy), lexical combinatorics (e.g.: collocations) and idiomatic expressions (e.g.: Chinese proverbs), the ability to make assumptions about the meaning of a word and to construct the meaning. Several criteria are therefore taken into account in the writing of the items: the language focus (communicative, morphosyntactic and lexical) as well as the nature of the comprehension (global comprehension, detailed comprehension, inference).