Page 206 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Assessing Language Skills

Draw, colour and write.

I’ve got hair.
eyes.
I’m wearing

Figure 13.11 Text Completion Assessment Tasks

My Dream School
Write a description of your dream school. Include the following points:
1. Describe the school.
2. Compare your dream school with your own school.
3. Describe a typical day in the school.
Figure 13.12 Example of Writing a Description for the Assessment Task

variety of contexts before the assessment takes place. For example, in picture
descriptions, the following structures are commonly used:

In the picture I can see ...
There is/are ..., There isn’t/aren’t ...
At the top/bottom of the picture there is/are ...

Besidesdescribingpictures,YLsmaybeaskedto describepeople(e.g.their
best friend), their hobbies, their classroom, a day in their life, their favourite
food, their favourite holiday, their dream house, etc. To make the assessment
tasks as communicative as possible, it is advisable to place the tasks in a rel-
evant context. For example, learners may be asked to write a description of
their favourite holiday to send to a friend from another country. In writing
the instructions for the tasks, it is crucial to include a detailed description of
the points that the learner should include in the text (see Figure 13.12).

Discussion
1. Discuss different rating scales for assessing YLs’ reading and writing skills.

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