SHORT HISTORY

ITK Centre was set up in 1967 under ELTE University control as an institution for the teaching and testing of foreign languages. In the same year The State Foreign Languages Examination Board, operating within ITK, was established according to a ministerial regulation on state language examination systems.

In the early years our primary field of activity was language teaching, with courses offered to highschool graduates in five languages. Later on our state exams received more and more attention- whereas only 5591 candidates registered in 6 languages in 1967, in 1997 exams were offered in 52 languages with 104000 candidates registered. A dynamic increase in numbers followed in the beginning of the 1990's when candidates with successful exams could hope for extra university entrance scores, or a raise at the workplace.

Our institute became regionally decentralized along with the significant increase in the numbers of exam candidates and ORIGÓ language exams could be taken in a number of different locations from the 1980's.

Only testing centers and their locations accredited by the Language Accreditation Commitee (NYAT) have been eligible to offer language exams as of january 2000. In feb. 2000 ITK was the first in Hungary to receive accreditation on its ORIGÓ system of bilingual language examinations in Ancient Greek, Arabic, Beás(Romany), Bulgarian, Chinese, Croat, Czech, Danish, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Lovári (Romany), Modern Greek, Polish, Portugese, Roumanian, Russian, Serb, Slovac, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. We also received accreditation on our monoloingual Hungarian as a Second Language examination.

From 2000 on operations at The State Foreign Languages Examination Board were continued by the National Foreign Language Committee (ONYT), run by the director of ITK.
We have since expanded our network of accredited testing centers by adding a number of locations outside Budapest and countrywide. Such great expansion naturally brought about an increase in the number of examiners. Presently 1000 professionals are commissioned by ONYT for language testing and examinations. Our efforts at ITK were greatly recognized by ALTE (Association of Language Testers in Europe) when we were granted partner status in 1999. We are honored to be the repesentative of language testing in Hungary through our monolingual system of Hungarian as a Second Language.

As of january 1st, 2005 ITK has been operating as an integrated but independent institute within ELTE University. Aside from language examinations, teaching is an important part of our work as well. Since september, 2005 ITK has provided general language courses for ELTE graduate students.