This is a preliminary report concerning the development of tests which measure the linguistic ability in Spanish of English students at the beginning of their post A-level courses. The Palspan (Post A-level Spanish project) pilot test battery is comprised of five sub-tests of between 45 and 90 minutes in length which test for speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. Processes involving marking and validation of the tests are discussed with particular reference to: (1) item analysis, (2) histograms, (3) variances and standard deviations, (4) correlation between tests, (5) relationship between test results and A-level results, (6) relationship between Palspan results and other external data, and (7) student performance. This study is heavily documented with linguistic and statistical data. (RL)