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Looking for English Proficiency Assessment (AssessEP) by Across Cultures?
AssessEP helps you understand your EAL and multilingual learners’ starting points in their English language proficiency. Click here to find out more.

 

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Looking for English Proficiency Assessment (AssessEP) by Across Cultures?
AssessEP helps you understand your EAL and multilingual learners’ starting points in their English language proficiency. Click here to find out more.

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Assessment in an EAL context takes many forms. It can be formal (e.g. tests and examinations), informal (e.g. teacher observations) or learner self-assessment.

At the beginning of the year, or when a new learner starts, teachers need to be able to make judgements about a learner’s language strength and learning needs. This is when teachers often look for a test or assessment to determine learners’ English language levels. There are a number of commercially available tests available, but in reality, there is no single test that will assess all of the necessary aspects of language skills. Teachers need to use a variety of assessments to make accurate judgements about learners and must be prepared to revise those judgements if necessary.

If you are interested in AssessEP, a comprehensive solution for English Proficiency Assessment, you can request a free demonstration and trial here.

Why we assess

Teachers need to know about learners’ strengths and learning needs in the key skill areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening. It is also helpful to know about a learner’s vocabulary level. This knowledge helps us to determine what we should teach learners. For example, if a learner already knows the first thousand words of English, we would start teaching at the second thousand words.

There is a wide variety of both formal and informal tools to determine learners’ skills and knowledge.

Continuing learners at a school will have previous work from EAL and other subjects that can be used to determine language strengths and learning needs. It is also good practice to involve mainstream teachers in making judgements, as they will know how learners are coping with the demands of the curriculum.

Assessment types

Whilst it is not best practice to assess learners within a short time of arrival, it is often unavoidable. Judgements for newly arrived learners often have to be made using observation and more formal assessments in EAL classrooms. Such assessments might include:

  • A speaking assessment: This could be a short interview, which will also enable you to find out about the learner’s learning background and allow you to gauge the learner’s listening skills.
  • Assessment of vocabulary knowledge: You will need to know a learner’s vocabulary level, which is usually measured as the first 1,000 words, the second 1,000 words, and so on.
  • A writing sample: Referenced against the learning continuum used in your context, e.g. CEFR, NASSEA, EAL Assessment Framework for Schools or the ELLP Matrix.
  • Reading assessments: This might include assessing decoding (i.e. can learners say the words) and, perhaps more importantly, assessing comprehension. Constructing reliable reading comprehension assessments is a highly skilled task and it is best to purchase a commercial decoding and comprehension test, such as the New Salford Sentence Reading Test, which provides an assessment of the learner’s reading age for decoding and comprehension, the New Group Reading Test (NGRT) or the Probe 2 Assessment in New Zealand.
  • With very new learners of English, you will also want to assess alphabet knowledge and letter sound correspondence.

AssessEP, our comprehensive solution for English Proficiency Assessment, provides you with ready-made online and offline assessments and results overview for assessing and re-assessing your EAL learners. This includes phonics, speaking, listening, reading and writing assessments. 

Once you have gathered the data from the assessments, you need to place the learners on the learning continuum used in your school. Armed with this information, you will be able to determine what the next learning steps for your learners are.

If you are interested in AssessEP, a comprehensive solution for English Proficiency Assessment, you can request a free demonstration and trial here.

Further learning - Blog

Teacher explaining comprehension skills to SEND learner
Created: Wed 31st Jul 2024

SEND learners, particularly those with speech and language difficulties, can find comprehension more challenging for a range of reasons. Understanding of subject-specific vocabulary and inference can be difficult areas for some learners.

Tip or Idea: Start simple! Use single images or short sentences and talk about what is happening. Can your learner relate this to an experience they have had themselves?

Created: Mon 5th May 2014

What tools are there if you have a sixth sense that something is not quite right?

At what point does a teacher start to question whether an EAL student’s lack of progress is due to English Language Development (ELD) issues or due to specific learning differences (SpLD).

These questions come up again and again. Learning English as an Additional Language is not a learning difficulty, however 20% of EAL students will follow the norm of having specific learning differences (Chapter 1, SFR24/2012, GovUK). Therefore, there is a possibility that an EAL student has SpLDs.

Created: Wed 2nd Nov 2016

An additional adult can be very effective in supporting teachers with EAL learners in the classroom. An additional adult may be a teaching assistant, learning support assistant or just a regular volunteer. They can significantly enhance support for learner motivation, confidence and self-esteem (Wilson et al, 2003). If you are a classroom teacher, you may be observed on how best to deploy your additional adults against your school standards.