1. Making the most of assessment: designing multi-purpose tasks for young language learners
Louise Courtney Warsaw 21st October 2011

2. Presentation Outline Introduction
Presentation of tasks used in transition project
Presentation of tasks used in Younger=Better project
Discussion

3. Introduction - Assessment
3 Types of Assessment
External
Classroom
SLA research
(Shohamy 1994)

4. Introduction - UK Context
Primary Languages Initiative
Compulsory for all children aged 7-11 from 2011 (did not happen)
Key Stage 2 (age 7-11) Framework for Languages incorporates 5 strands:
Literacy
Oracy
Intercultural Awareness
Knowledge About Language
Language Learning Strategies

5. The transition study
Success of primary languages depends upon effective transition
continuity, building on previous learning, managing a mixed in-take
Longitudinal case study of 26 children who learnt French in primary school.
Pupils from two primary schools feeding in to one secondary school.
Focused on the problematic transition period – 12 months from summer term year 6 (aged 10/11) until summer term year 7 (aged 11/12).

6. Research Questions:
How does the children’s target language proficiency evolve during the transition from year 6 to year 7 and is there evidence of linguistic progression/attrition?
What are the similarities and differences between the primary and secondary foreign language curricula and pedagogic practices and how do they effect the children’s language learning?
What effect does the transition from year 6 to year 7 have on the children’s motivation for foreign language study and their confidence in the classroom?

7. Assessment challenges
Variability of pupil experience
Reluctance to assess at primary
Deter enjoyment of lessons
Lack of teacher experience/confidence
Little knowledge of young learner attainment in schools
Incongruence of standard framework level descriptors and SLA measures of grammatical progression
Developmental route/rate
errors/accuracy
sensitivity to progress

8. Considerations when assessing young learners
Age-appropriacy/cognitive demand
Short/fast-paced
Need for ‘warm-up’
Interesting/fun/engaging
L1 literacy skills
Content validity - UK Primary Framework and National Curriculum

9. Guiding principles for assessment
Focus on productive skills
Language use
Implicit knowledge
More varied output
Ability to measure individual achievement
Assessment of progression over three rounds
Emphasis on what the learners were able to produce
Measurement of multiple aspects of linguistic progression
Ability to analyse data on different levels

10. Evaluation of target language development
Two key areas of focus:
Vocabulary development – productive vocabulary
Predominantly nouns, few verbs
(Cable et al. 2010, Low et al. 1995, Szpotowicz 2009, David 2008)
Morpho-syntactic development (grammar) – emergent creativity
formulaic chunks
verb morphology
nouns
acquisition sequences for negation and questions
(Mitchell & Hooper 1999, Rule & Marsden 2006, Myles et al. 2004)
Two further areas of investigation:
Interactive/communicative capability
Development of L2 literacy

11. Assessment Tasks Oracy-based tasks Paired oral role-play task
Photo description task
Negation Task
Literacy-based Tasks
Reading Aloud Task
Reading Comprehension
Writing Task

12. Negation Task Designed to elicit a specific linguistic structure
Well-documented path for acquisition of grammatical negation in L1 and L2
Role of chunks – je n’aime pas and je déteste in expressing negation

13. Data Processing and Analysis
Oral tasks – transcribed using CHILDES CLAN program
Writing task – entered into CHILDES CLAN program
Reading Comprehension – marking criteria – score out of a maximum of 36 points
Reading Aloud – transcribed - rating scale 0-3

14. Advantages of using CLAN program
Vocabulary measures – lexical diversity, TTR, word counts
Permits analysis of specific grammatical structures
Aggregation of files for analysis across modes/groups

15. Younger=Better Project
Document the development of linguistic competence among young classroom learners of French at three different starting ages, and identify similarities and differences
Compare the rates of development at different ages after the same amount of classroom exposure
Vocabulary
Morpho-syntactic (grammar) development

16. Younger=Better Project
73 young learners in two schools, all L1 English
Year 1 (5/6 year olds n=27)
Year 3 (7/8 year olds n=26)
Year 7 (11/12 year olds n=18)
No previous instruction in target language
Part-time teacher employed by the project
38 hours of instruction over 19 weeks

17. Empirical Design: Testing
Four testing cycles:
Pre-instruction tests
Mid-instruction tests (after 18 hours of teaching)
Post-instruction tests (after 38 hours of teaching)
Delayed post-tests (2 months after cessation of teaching)

18. Empirical Design: Testing
Role Play task
Story Retelling Task
Elicited Imitation

19. Elicited Imitation Task
Used to investigate whether there are age differences for knowledge of grammatical structure
Limitations in working memory in young children (Gathercole and Baddeley 1996) and working memory develops through childhood
Adult working memory capacity has been determined by Miller (1956) as 7 chunks plus or minus 2, where a chunk is defined as either a stand-alone word or multi-word phrases
So we would expect young children’s capacity to be less

20. Elicited Imitation Task
Administered the task with contextual support
Stimuli of varying lengths. Up to 9 words. The participants had encountered all of the vocabulary items
In this task an utterance read out and then learner asked to repeat the utterance as exactly as possible
It is claimed that if the stimulus is the appropriate length the learner can only repeat the utterance if it has been processed and some understanding has occurred
Learners also asked comprehension questions in English after each section – focus on meaning rather than form

21. Scoring Different codes used: 0 not produced
1 produced prosodically only
2 produced incorrectly but understandable
3 produced correctly

22. Multiple levels of analysis
Is it also possible to apply task data to national framework measures?
National Curriculum Level Descriptors
Would my oral tasks provide evidence to assign learners
to levels?
What kind of rating scheme could you develop?

23. Questions ?
Contact details: