TESTS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

GENERAL APPROACH Children aged from about 5 to 12 Testing provides an opportunity to develop positive attitudes towards assessment, to help them recognize the value of assessment.

THE FIRST RECOMMENDATION A special effort be made to make testing an integral part of assessment, and assessment an integral part of the teaching program. All three should be consistent with each other in terms of learning objectives and the kinds of tasks which the children are expected to perform. Testing will not then be seen as something separate from learning.

THE SECOND RECOMMENDATION Feedback from tests (and feedback from assessment generally) should be immediate and positive. By being immediate its value will be maximized. By telling children not only what their weaknesses are but also what they have done well.

THE THIRD RECOMMENDATION Self assessment by the children be made part of the teaching program. This will help them to develop the habit of monitoring their own progress. It should also allow them to take pleasure in what they are achieving. To improve their ability to assess themselves, they should be encouraged to compare their own assessments with those of their teachers.

PARTICULAR DEMANDS 1. Young children have a relatively short attention span. For this reason tests should not be long. Individual tasks should be brief and varied. If necessary, a single test can be broken down into two or more tests.

PARTICULAR DEMANDS 2. Children enjoy stories and play, which should be reflected in test tasks. Games can include versions of the kind of word games to be found in comics and puzzle books. 3. Children respond well to pictures, attractive typography, and colors. Tests should include these features if possible.

PARTICULAR DEMANDS 4. First language and cognitive abilities are still developing. Tasks should be ones that the children could be expected to handle comfortably in their own language. 5. Since children learn through social interaction, it is appropriate to include tasks that involve interaction between two or more children.

PARTICULAR DEMANDS 6. If teaching and learning involve tasks which are ‘integrated’ (in the sense that two or more skills are involved in its completion), similar tasks may have a place in tests. However, these are not so suitable where diagnostic information about separate skills is being sought.

RECOMMENDED TECHNIQUES Whatever techniques are used with young learners, it is essential that the children have plenty of opportunities to practice with them before they meet them in tests. Ideally, the techniques should be used in learning exercises as well as in testing.

TECHNIQUES TO TEST LISTENING Placing objects or identifying people Multiple choice pictures Color and draw on existing line drawing Information transfer

INFORMATION TRANSFER dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd dddddddddddddddddd Name: John Thomson John’ best friend: _______________________________________ Sports: football and _____________________________________ Where John plays football: at ___________________________ How many goals he scored last week ____________________

TECHNIQUES TO TEST READING Multiple choice

TECHNIQUES TO TEST WRITING Anagram with picture Gap filling with pictures

TECHNIQUES FOR TESTING ORAL ABILITY There should be a long enough warm-up period for the children to become relaxed. In the case of the youngest children, it may be helpful to introduce toys and dolls from the outset.

TECHNIQUES FOR TESTING ORAL ABILITY Asking straightforward questions about the child and their family. Giving the child a card with a scene on it, and then asking them to point out people, say what color something is, what someone is doing, etc. Giving the child small cards, each with an object drawn on it, and asking them to place each of these ‘object cards’ in a particular location on a larger scene card.

TECHNIQUES FOR TESTING ORAL ABILITY Giving the child two pictures that are very similar but which differ in obvious ways. The child is asked to say what the differences are. The child is given a short series of pictures that tell a story. The tester begins the story and asks the child to complete it. Sets of pictures are presented. In each set there is one picture which does not ‘belong’. The child is asked to identify the odd one out and explain why it is different from the others.

TECHNIQUES FOR TESTING ORAL ABILITY Where we want to see how well children can interact with their peers, useful techniques are: If the two children belong to the same class, each can say a specified number of things about another classmate, at the end of which the other child has to guess who is being described.

TECHNIQUES FOR TESTING ORAL ABILITY There are four different picture postcards. Each child is given three of them, such that they have two cards in common and one which is different. By asking and answering questions in turn, they have to discover which pictures they have in common. All the pictures should have some common features, or the task may end too quickly without much language being used.

TECHNIQUES FOR TESTING ORAL ABILITY There are two pictures (A and B) which are different but which contain a number of objects that are identical. One child is given picture A, the other picture B. The first child has to describe an object in their picture and the other has to say whether it is to be found in their picture. The second child then describes something in their picture, and the other responds. This continues until they have found a specified number of objects which are in both pictures.

TECHNIQUES FOR TESTING ORAL ABILITY The children can each be given a card with information on it. In both cases the information is incomplete. The task is for them to ask questions of each other so that they end up with all the information. Examples would be diaries with missing appointments, or timetables with missing classes.