Sfi-provet - The National Test of Swedish for Adult Immigrants

Setting and Pretesting

1.1 Selection of materials

Materials for Reading and Listening are selected from a wide range of sources including newspapers, brochures, information for consumers, signs, advertisments, forms, diagrams, tables, radio, telephone answering machines. Some material is also written especially for the test.

1.2 Test item writing

Test items are written by two team members. Items are subject to revision on the basis of comments from an advisory board of experienced teachers and school administrators.

1.3 Pretesting

Items are pretested on aproximately 200 students and subseqently analysed. Feedback on the appropriateness of materials and items is gathered from the teachers of those students participating in the pretesting, and teachers' ratings of students are compared with results from the pretesting. After revision and modification of items, the test is recognized by the National Agency for Education.

Marking

2.1 Process

All tests are administered and marked locally. The writing and oral components are scored according to criteria presented and described in the Teacher's Manual along with a number of authentic commented examples (examples of oral production on CD).

2.2 Training

Teachers are invited to participate in seminars on assessing students' written and spoken production. These seminars take place several times every year at various places around the country.

2.3 Checking

Schools are strongly recommended to double mark the writing and oral production of all students. Test users are further requested to return a random sample of students' tests (including audio-tapes with examples of scoring of oral production) for analysis and follow-up. This analysis serves as a basis for subsequent development of various aspects of the test including e.g. marking criteria.

Security

The test can be given on any date appropriate to the test user. Every version of the test is however kept secret for three years and schools are instructed to handle all test materials according to the Act of Secrecy.

The test consists of five parts (papers):

Speaking

Students are tested both individually and in pairs. They are given two tasks and are expected to participate actively in a conversation with arguments, narratives, reports, directions or the like. For the most part students have the possibility to choose among several topics within the given task.

Listening

There are three tasks with short dialogues, extracts from radio programmes, announcements on answering machines etc. The tasks are played twice and students are expected to comprehend the overall meaning as well as specific details. The format is matching, MCQ and SAQ.

Writing

This paper contains one task where students are requested to write a letter, (part of) an application or an account of about 100 - 150 words.

Another shorter writing task, as well as some kind of form to fill in, are included in the ‘thematic papers' (see below).

Reading, Lexis, Structure, Social and Cultural Knowledge

Two papers consist of tasks on specific themes (one theme per paper) such as Labour, Health and Disease, Environment, etc. Various texts and text types are given (e.g. newpaper articles, diagrams or instructions) and tasks are set to measure students' overall reading comprehension as well as their understanding of specific words, idioms and grammatical structures. Formats may be SAQ, MCQ or matching. One of these papers also contains a short writing task such as a postcard or a message.

The importance of social and cultural knowledge is clearly stated in the curriculum and the content of most texts and tasks touches upon various aspects of Swedish society. Some tasks, however, directly address social and cultural knowledge.

Weighting of components

Of the total mark productive skills carry 45% and receptive skills 45%. The final 10% refer to Social and cultural knowledge:

Speaking: 32%
Writing: 16%
Listening: 14%
Reading , lexis, structure: 25%
Social and cultural knowledge 13 %

Results

Scores from all tasks and parts are aggregated with a ‘pass mark' at 70%.