Young Learners Special Interest Group

Testing children

Two years ago a group of five ALTE members (Alliance Française, Cambridge ESOL, the Goethe Institut, the University of Lisbon and the University of Salamanca) set up a new partnership. Working within the framework of ALTE's ongoing research on testing, the primary concern of this group is the testing of children in the present international context.

Which children should we test - and why?

The idea of testing children is, first and foremost, a response to the following factors.

1. Changes in the international context. These can be divided into:

• geopolitical and economic changes within Europe,
• research carried out by the Council of Europe - the production of new reference documents; these are:
  • the Common European Framework, which includes reference to teaching languages to children;
  • the portfolio for children - a variety of national political contexts, within which education authorities aim to lower the age at which children start to study foreign languages and need some form of external certification to validate learners' skills.

2. Requests from institutions and teachers.

People in both of these groups are frequently confused by the administrative decisions imposed on them and baffled by descriptions of teaching materials, and the strategies used in teaching and teacher training.

3. The concerns of parents.

Parents sometimes view language teaching (which they may consider a subject of subsidiary importance) as something which takes time away from the teaching of more basic subjects - and with no means of verifying either goals or results. And we have not even mentioned the question of how to motivate children - for whom the approval of their parents is crucial - to want to study a foreign language.

How do we test children?

Within the context of the situation outlined above, Cambridge ESOL began to develop tests for children at three levels in 1993. These tests had their first live administrations in 1997. Cambridge ESOL has since been joined by the Alliance Française (2001), the University of Lisbon and the University of Salamanca. Two other ALTE partners (the Goethe Institute and the University of Athens) take part in the ongoing discussions and work aimed at the future production of tests.

The objectives of the ALTE project go beyond mere test development:

• The aim is to provide teachers with materials (communicative and linguistic learning objectives) which are suited to the needs of the children in question (7 to 12 year-olds) both in terms of topics which interest them and in terms of language.
• The tests are also a means of putting over an attractive and motivating communicative methodology, which is based on pictorial support and game-like tasks of a kind with which children are familiar through their everyday life both at school and at home.
• At the same time, they may constitute the children's first experience of serious formative evaluation. Although the tests are primarily aimed at motivating candidates - because everybody succeeds, and only the degree of success varies - they help to prepare candidates for future, adult test-taking experiences.
• When producing the tests, the group has taken into account language teaching text-books which are already used by teachers. The tests must remain linked to the learning process and be based on materials and documentation that provide the means for everyone involved to move forward - and in the same direction!
• Tests have been developed in an atmosphere of close collaboration between the partners, which takes the Cambridge ESOL suite of Young Learners Tests, Starters, Movers and Flyers, as a starting point. The process of linguistic and cultural adaptation to the different languages (English, French, Spanish and Portuguese) has been carried out by several experts representing each partner. Test materials have been rigorously pre-tested in a variety of contexts (in Asia and America as well as Europe), in order to validate their content.

The final, and in some ways most important, stage of the project is taking place at present. This stage deals with the development and production of Can Do Statements at Level A1. Existing Can Dos do not seem to take into account the needs of children (whose areas of activity differ markedly from those of adolescents and adults!). This work is being undertaken at a time when the Council of Europe - in particular Dr John Trim - is engaged in writing a description of Breakthrough /Level A1. Synchronicity between these two areas of research will undoubtedly allow new light to be shed on this first European level of language learning and evaluation.