Assessment for Placement

The options below range from informal to formal assessment; you will want to choose an option that fits the type of program you have and your organization’s staff and budget resources.

General Assessment

• Many programs that are only doing a couple of levels, conversation classes, or drop-in programs just have students self-report to save time. It can be as simple as just asking if they think they are beginning or intermediate or asking how much English they know with appropriate hand gestures.
• Many textbooks have placement tests that will place students based on the levels for their textbooks.
• There are standardized tests that are aligned to the six National Reporting Standards (NRS) levels that can be used as placement tests. These have a cost involved.

► CASAS test:
https://www.casas.org/product-overviews/assessments/appraisals

► Tests of Adult Basic Education (TABE) Complete Language Assessment System—English:
http://tabetest.com/students-2/tabe-class-e/

• Students might also self-assess by filling out a can-do chart, such as one developed by Family Services, Inc (see Worksheets Tab for full-size printable chart)

• Other examples of can-do checklists from the Center for Applied Linguistics can be found here:
  https://www.cal.org/caela/tools/program_development/elltoolkit/Part2-5NeedsAssessment%26LearnerSelf-Evaluation.pdf

Considerations when selecting placement tests:

(Click to enlarge)

Assessment of Specific Skills

You can also test students to see what they are able to do in the different areas of language. The advantage to this is that you can align it better with the outcomes you have for each of your levels. We have listed some general criteria often used to evaluate these skills. You could also use the content standards in Chapter 11 to set the criteria to help you to decide what you think students should be able to do for each of the levels in your program.

■ Writing Tests

What can students write about?

You can have them write about a variety of topics, but also demonstrate they can do a number of tasks. There are examples below and hundreds of prompts available online.

They can demonstrate how to give instructions:
It can be a question about giving directions (turn right, go straight, etc.) or how to do something. It can also be series of pictures in a sequence that they can explain.

They can describe something:
It could be a picture with a number of things going on, like a picture of a workplace.

You can see what sort of vocabulary they have about a topic:
Make a list of things you do at work.
Describe the things you do when you go to the doctor.

You can give a task that requires they use a particular type of grammar:
Imagine you had a month when you could do anything you wanted. What would you do?
What are some things you haven’t done in your life yet that you want to do?

You could have them express a point of view:
What do you think are the best ways to learn English?

They can compare and contrast something:
How is your country different from 100 years ago?
How will it be different 100 years in the future?

They can tell a story:
Tell me the story about how you got your first job.

They can talk about a problem and a solution:
What is a goal you want to reach? What can you do to reach it?

How do I evaluate their writing?

• Rubrics give a set of criteria that can be used to evaluate what students produce. A writing rubric can include
• topics such as:
• Connection between ideas (focus on the topic of the writing)
• Sentence structure (from simple sentences with one clause—one subject and verb, such as “I eat breakfast.”— to more complicated compound sentences with multiple clauses, such as “I eat breakfast late each morning because I don’t get up early, which makes me late for work.”)
• Number of sentences
• Grammar
• Vocabulary choice
• Mechanics: punctuation, spelling, capitalization
• For higher levels: clear topic sentence with supporting ideas

■ Oral Tests

Most of these assessments look at a variety of criteria:

• Related to the topic
• Amount of time spent speaking (one-word answers to a long period of time)
• Appropriate grammar and vocabulary
• Simple/complex language used
• Comprehensible pronunciation
• Fluency (how hesitant is the speech?)
• Interaction (can they maintain the conversation?)
• Compensation strategies (what do they do when they aren’t sure how to respond?)
• Prompting (how much extra do you have to say to get them to understand the question or keep talking?) Most of these tests will go through a series of questions
• that move from simple to more complex.

These are some examples:

Connect Placement Test
http://old.fltrp.com/download/11011811.pdf
English Unlimited Placement Test
http://shvidko172.narod.ru/olderfiles/1/Oral_Placement_Test.pdf
CASAS Oral Screening
https://www.casas.org/docs/default-source/training-materials/casas-oral-...
IECP Penn State Oral Placement Test
https://scholarsphere.psu.edu/concern/generic_works/d217qp592

Other options: You can give them a topic and ask them to talk for one minute. (If you have access to video, you can show them an example.) The questions listed in the “Writing Tests” section are some examples of what you can ask.

■ Listening/Reading Tests

Listening and reading tests often ask students to demonstrate they can do the same sorts of tasks. Questions look at whether students can:

• Figure out the main idea
• Identify important details
• Answer inference questions
• Guess the meaning of unknown words
• Identify referents in reference words, such as he, it, them, etc.
• Decide what might come next
• Say where they might hear/read the passage

Are there other options?
Some programs have tried a placement test students can do before they come to register for the program.

Brookline Adult and Community Education ESL Placement Test
http://www.brooklineadulted.org/esl-placement-test/

What many programs will do is a combination of these types of tests. For example, many of the standardized and textbook placement tests may adequately assess reading, listening, grammar, and vocabulary, but not assess speaking well or at all. So, in addition to using those tests, programs may design (or find online) a speaking assessment to place students.