Just a language certificate or a valid teaching aid in itself?

There exist several standardized tests to assess language proficiency in terms of knowledge and communicative competence for study and work purposes. The list keeps on growing and existing certificates are being continuously updated. But are they just assessment tools for the more hard-working and ambitious learners to prove their language skills, or can we actually use them as a different approach to teaching? Let’s have a look at how some of the Reading tasks can be exploited not only in our own tests, but also in our classes to help our learners develop their language skills