Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ninjamonkey]

you know, beyond just talking to them and making a subjective judgement

i'm looking for some good objective testing standards

[some waygug-in]

Who are you talking about? Kids or adults.

With kids I "guesstimate" roughly by asking them vocabulary and content questions based on Let's go levels.

For adults:

I've seen this type of thing, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.

A set of questions based on progressively more difficult grammatical structures. They have to be able to answer each question with correct form in a complete sentence. (It doesn't have to be true, just a good sentence)

Ex:

1. What do you usually do on weekends?

2. What are you doing now?

3. What did you do last weekend?

4. What were you doing at 4:00 yesterday?

5. Have you ever been to another country?

6. What have you been doing since you finished university?

7. What had you done before your 18th birthday?

Then when they finish this part, they are supposed to ask 5 correct questions.

[ddeubel]

I wouldn't guesstimate! We should be abit profession and value our clients. So much we might miss and they deserve some objective standard whether they are kids in a public school (we are accountable to the parents) or adults at a hagwon (we are accountable to their financial outlay).

I used to be head teacher at an ESL school. I was always brought new students to place/assess for level. Usually 2 o3 right before I was teaching my own class. Daily. So little by little I devised and tweeked a method that works.

Get a large picture, one with lots of detail.

Get 10 questions ranging from least difficult to most difficult
1. Is it raining? What time is it?
10. What would she have done if she hadn't brought he umbrella?

Also then give them 1 min. to state all the things they see...vocabulary.

Where they first make a mistake, a literal and conscious mistake, is the level they are to be at. Vocabulary acts as a guide. and can slide the level up or down 1 place.

This can be done with any student at any time....

Right now, I am hoping to devise a placement test which judges the level of a student based on the amount of detail/info. they are able to retain after being read a story. You read the story, then ask pointed questions. (who was driving the bus? Where did she sit? etc...). The higher level students remember much more, lower level students very little. Language level is very intimately connected with retention of language....Hope to do my thesis on this.

Anyways, hope this helps.

DD

[baldrick]

Surely your placement tests have to be relevent to materials studied in class.

For example if your doing a conversation class and you need to 'place' students, that suggests there are differant levels of the class. Take the text book from the lowest level class and use examples from the units in the book to converse with the student. If its too easy try the next book.......etc etc.

If you don't have a syllabus to follow then its going to be difficult to place students.........you can barely tell by asking a few questions that are totally random. Having a text book for the class means you have some topic areas, some grammar structures etc to aim at covering throughout the course.....and there is a standard for assessment.

[ejmlab]

I use a modified version of the IELTS speaking test. I ask that each student fills out a resume form (that I provide) to bring to the interview.

The speaking test is divided into 3 parts:

1) Background questions based on resume (ie. family, home, experiences, hopes, education etc.)

2) I then let the student select a presentation topic from a pile of cards. I give them 1 minute to prepare and then ask that they present for 1-2 minutes.

3) After the presentation I ask follow-up questions based on the topic presentation. The follow-up questions are related to the topic but take it further and require different language functions.

The topics for part 2 are very important because they allow for a range of communicative functions. For example:

Describe a food you like to cook. Include: 1) How do you prepare it? 2) How often do you eat it? 3) Describe an occasion when you have prepared or eaten this food.

Also, I usually let the student select two cards from my pile and then choose the one they want to present. I allow them to take notes during the 1 minute of preparation time and use them during the presentation. I enforce both the minimum and maximum presentation times to teach effectiveness of communication.

You can check out the IELTS website for more information on how they grade their tests (using a 9 band range). As I've said, my test is a modification of the IELTS test but has some important differences. One important difference is that my test typically takes only 5 minutes while IELTS speaking tests take 11-14 minutes and include a longer presentation, more indepth discussion of the presentation and an extended part 1 (background discussion).

I hope this helps you.

Cheers

[jacl]

I taught my middle-school kids how to play poker (Big Old Two - Chinese game) and I play with them at the end of class. I ask them questions or just talk to them while we are playing in a relaxed atmosphere. Also, before class starts, I try to ask my students questions about the weekend and what they did or about what they are going to do on the weekend.

Another thing I do is read easy books to them. Like easier than the material than they are learning (middle school). You know. Those novels with a limited amount of words. You get a few words that they don't know but should. Then you can ask them questions where they have to use the past tense.

Elementary kids just need to be taught or cover material that they might already know anyway because repeating and practicing pronunciation is always valuable.

[Ody]

beyond finding out to what extent they understand my questions, i ask questions where they should use different verb tenses to answer. i also listen for subject verb agreement and vocabulary.



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[KOD]

A proficiency interview conducted conversation style is best. Takes a while to master the technique but is probably closer to being an objective assessment than other methods.

http://www.actfl.org

http://www.actfl.org/files/public/Guidelinesspeak.pdf