Assessing young language learners

Assessing Young Learners

By: Penny McCay

Silvia Andrea TarazonaNatalia Forero González

Young Learner:

students attending to the first seven years of formal schooling. (aged 5-13).

Bilingual Learners: Students who are proficient in two languages.

Some Key Concepts

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High stakes

Low stakes

External assessment

Stakeholders

Diagnostic assessment

On-the-run assessment

Key concepts

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Foreign Language Learning: Learning a language that is rarely heard outside the classroom. Second Language Learning: Learning a language to communicate in a country where the majority of people speak it since birth.

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age

Appropiatness of curriculum

Language proficiency of teacher

Teacher´s teaching skills

Exposure to the target language

Expected Learning outcomes

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Young learners in the upper school years are moving to Piaget´s formal operational stage.

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The attention span of young learners .

YL are developing abilities to think in new ways.

Cognitive Growth

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Cognitive

Growth 5 to 7 years old

8 to 10 years old

11 to 13 years old

Students learn by direct experiences.

Students are trying to manipulate ideas, but direct experience is still very important.

It is possible to use the L2 to talk about recent events, plans for the future and career aspirations

It is important to take

into account the stage of delevolpment for appropiate assessment.

Assessment should take place in a quiet setting.

Assessing through team games .

Assessing Young Learners During Cognitive Growth

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Socioeconomic and

cultural background influence children´s individual experience of the world.

They start developing a possitive or negative concept of self.

Emotional and Social Growth

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Children start developing independence.

School years: deal with hostility,dominance and friendship. Interact with peers to lead and to be lead. to hide anxiety

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In this stage students

need: love, security, and recognition to function in groups.

Build students social skills.

Emotional and Social Growth

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Take into account students likes and interests. Peer influence may affect the reaction to

certain tasks. Assessment should involve cultural-based

topics and tasks. Environment should be “ psychologically

safe”. Tasks can involve movement and play. Instructions and reviews should be clear. Feedback needs to be immediate and friendly.

Assessment During Emotional and Social Growth

Physical Growth

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Development of motor skills:

1. Gross-motor skills: run, climb, balance.

2. Fine-motor skills: write, cut, draw. Implies hand-eye coordination.

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Physical activity to accompain language-

related response.

Assessing Young Learners During Physical Growth

5 to 7 years old 9 to 13 years old

Assessment tasks should involve playing since they incorporate fantasy, reality and fun.

They get tired more easily sitting than moving.

Physical growth needs to take into account assessment tasks in terms of tiredeness and hand-eye coordination

Involve safe and physical activities to assess.

Literacy Skills

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• Writing is helped through drawings in the first years.

• Children are developing understanding about how reading and writing work. image retrieved from: www.voyaprenderingles.com

Literacy Skills

5 to 7 years old 8 to 10 years old 11 to 13 years old

Children have started to write, with well developed oral skills in L1.

Stdents start to organize ideas to write.

Students can read and write about fiction and non-fiction and start to develop critical thinking.

5 to 7 years old 8 to 10 years old 11 to 13 years

old

Students understand that the print “tells” the story.

Learners begin to self-correct errors.

Students increase their silent reading rate.

Students develop basic vocabulary and can read slowly.

They are understanding how literacy works.

Students still combine drawings with words.

Students start reading and writing for specific purposes.

Learners understand that people can interpret in different ways the same material.

Students can read for pleasure.

Literacy skills

Text that students can

read and really understand.

Set clear expectation for the writing tasks.

Tasks should help them to feel good and to encourage creativity.

Assessing Young Learners´ Literacy Skills

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Students self-

esteem is strongly affected by experiences at school.

Vulnerability

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• Assessment should give student a sense of progression.

• Friendly feedback to avoid loss of motivation.

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Not every child develops the same way, and all dimensions do not develop at the same time.

Rate of development

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Beliefs and Practices of Elementary Education

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Gardner, 1993. Established 8 different types of

intelligences.

Multiple Intelligences

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In constructivist education, children’s learning skills are promoted; children are encouraged to become active learners through a two-way communication of ideas with other people, with other peers and with teachers.

Constructivist Education

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skills or procedures are

thoroughtly learned.

Range of examples with a common structure.

The new tasks appears similar to the old ones.

Scaffolding Support

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The Power of Assessment on Young Learners´ lives.

Provide meaningful and

appropriate information about a child’s language use ability, and avoid bias against any child because of that child’s characteristics .

Fair Assessment

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Gives educators feedback in the teaching

learning process.

Provides information to administrators.

Provides information to parents about their children.

Gives students knowledge on their own progress.

Effective Assessment

It sets power relationships that become established and habitual (Foucault, 1979).

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Assessment is not effective when….

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Pedadogic Purposes Administrative Purposes

Aim to promote learning, takes into account students needs.

Furnishing information about students and schools performances for managment and account goals.

• It is believed that administrative purposes prevail over pedagogical standards .

• Assessment is related to standards :

Content Standards Performance Standards

BIAS FOR BEST

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• Possitve feedback to motivate them to succeed.

• Appropiate tasks and instructions

Young learners and language learning

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Language use ability, the ability to use language communicatively

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Characteristics

• understand new language.

• respond appropriately to directives.

• create their own utterances.

• use language appropriately in non-rehearsed interactions.

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Evidence of language use ability (early stages)

• understand extended teacher input and interaction

• interact with peers, teachers and others

• read and write in the language

• employ language learning strategies

Extending language use ability (more advanced

levels)

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Sociocultural Perspective of SLA

Sociocultural‘Learning how to mean’

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Cultural codes/rulesThe role of speaking and silence

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Interpersonal relationships

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Rules of politeness

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Non-verbal behavior

Language is ‘the most salient way we have of establishing and advertising our social identities’

The nature of the classroom determines how well children develop

their new identities in the second language

Developing new identitiesh

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The discourse of the classroom can be said to be made up of the social interaction amongst participants. Learning the specific

discourses of curriculum content areas such as science, social studies, physical education and mathematics.

Learning the discourses of the classroom

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Include, at least, the following four features: a focus on meaning, interesting and engaging input and interacting, selected opportunities to focus on form,

and a safe and supportive learning environment.

Optimal conditions for language learning

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Hard work

Children do not simply absorb the language around them.

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• ‘use L1’ in order to double-check words or expressions not available in L2.

• ‘appeal for assistance’.

• ‘build patterns’

Printes (1999)

Children in a foreign language situation:

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• The Silent period

Effective language assessment builds up children’s abilities to use language in the full meaning of the term.

Assessment and feedback need to evoke positive emotions in children about language learning, about themselves and about others

Implications for assessment

Conclusions

• It is important to take into account students cognitve, social, emotional and physical growth in order to design appropiate tasks for assessment.

• Assessment can have a possitive or a negative impact on students´ lives, reason why assessment must be valid and fair.

• L1 should be considered as a tool of reference for young students in their process of learning a L2.

• Language learning is a social process rather than an individual process.

• Feedback is important to improve the learning process , to encourage and motivate students in their learning process.

• Assessment not only affect learners, it also affects stakeholders in diferent ways.

ACTIVITY1. Disscuss in groups wheter the tasks suggested are apprpiate or inapproapiate for young learners taking into account:

• Age• Cognitive development• Social and emotional development• Physical development• Literacy development