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This volume offers new insights into the assessment of the language
of Young Learners (YLs). YLs are defined here as being from 5 to 17
years, and are treated as three distinct subgroups: younger
children (5/6 to 8/9 years), older children (8/9 to 12/13 years)
and teenagers (12/13 to 17 years).The first half addresses
fundamental issues, beginning with the characteristics of YLs and
how these are manifested in first language development. The authors
consider the potential ability of each age group to perform in a
second or foreign language, proposing a rough age-related
correspondence with CEFR levels. Finally, principles of assessment,
specifically formative assessment and testing, are presented in the
light of linguistic, cognitive and social development.The second
half focusses on testing a range of 'skills'. Theoretical models of
performance are introduced, followed by a practical analysis of
approaches to the testing of each skill for the three age groups,
illustrated with examples. The authors conclude by summing up
developmental characteristics of each age group, and their
implications for language testing.The book is intended for a wide
readership within the field of teaching and assessing the language
of young learners. Researchers are offered scope for further
investigation of what emerges from the discussion, while
practitioners will hopefully find support in their day-to-day work
with YLs.
This volume offers new insights into the assessment of the language
of Young Learners (YLs). YLs are defined here as being from 5 to 17
years, and are treated as three distinct subgroups: younger
children (5/6 to 8/9 years), older children (8/9 to 12/13 years)
and teenagers (12/13 to 17 years).The first half addresses
fundamental issues, beginning with the characteristics of YLs and
how these are manifested in first language development. The authors
consider the potential ability of each age group to perform in a
second or foreign language, proposing a rough age-related
correspondence with CEFR levels. Finally, principles of assessment,
specifically formative assessment and testing, are presented in the
light of linguistic, cognitive and social development.The second
half focusses on testing a range of 'skills'. Theoretical models of
performance are introduced, followed by a practical analysis of
approaches to the testing of each skill for the three age groups,
illustrated with examples. The authors conclude by summing up
developmental characteristics of each age group, and their
implications for language testing.The book is intended for a wide
readership within the field of teaching and assessing the language
of young learners. Researchers are offered scope for further
investigation of what emerges from the discussion, while
practitioners will hopefully find support in their day-to-day work
with YLs.
This book reports on a two-part study: the validation of a test of
spoken English for Norwegian secondary school pupils and the
corpus-based investigation of the role played by 'smallwords', such
as 'well', 'sort of', and 'you know', in bringing about fluency.
The first study builds on the Messickian six central aspects of
construct validity to produce a practical framework for test
validation. It proceeds to use this framework to identify potential
sources of invalidity in the test being examined, and concludes
that a principal flaw lies in quality of the band-scale descriptors
used in assessing test performance, particularly those relating to
'fluency', which was too vaguely described, and which took little
regard to the particular language which helps us to keep going,
within and across speaking turns, the smallwords. The second study
sets about to explore the concept of fluency, and to expose the
extent to which it is acknowledged in the literature to be
associated with smallwords, albeit under other names. A study of
corpora of the transcripts of test takers judged to be at low or
high fluency levels, as well as of young native speakers taking the
same test, reveals a clear correlation between smallwords use and
fluency measured in mechanical ways. In order to investigate how
smallwords were used, a framework, based on relevance theory, is
drawn up and used to compare the communicative signals sent through
smallwords by the learners with those sent by the native speakers.
In conclusion, the findings from the corpus study are drawn on to
propose new elements to include in descriptors of fluency, and the
implications of the study for classroom practices are discussed.
The bookshould, thus, be of interest to those concerned with the
design and validation of tests of the spoken language, as well as
those interested in what goes into spoken communication and how to
help learners acquire fluency.
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