ABSTRACT
The DELF, Diplôme d'études en langue française (Diploma in French Language Studies) and the DALF, Diplôme Approfondi de Langue Française (Diploma in Advanced French Language) are certifications of French-language abilities for non-native speakers. These diplomas were created in 1985 by French Ministry of Education in order to catch up with the promotion of the other languages such as English, German and Japanese for non-native speakers through the official exams and certifications. At the beginning, the influence of DELF and DALF was limited. However, after 2001, they became a worldwide reference in the field of language exams to measure the ability for non-native speakers due to two reasons. Firstly, the developers of DELF and DALF aimed to make their levels to correspond to those of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Secondly, the realisation of the exams was centralized in the International Centre for French Studies (Centre international d'études pédagogiques, CIEP) in order to have the same quality, legitimacy and standard of assessment for all the candidates in the world. In this paper, we introduce the different stages of the quantitative and qualitative evelopment of the DELF-DALF in the world and, particularly, in Osaka. We also show how these new exams totally and successfully have changed the evaluation process, the teachers training and, at the end, all the teaching materials in French language.