Background and Goals - part 4

Whereas the goals of 1. - pragmatical appropriacy are the same goals given to the test construction, the details of the test itself are very different - in the case of the students studied here, long and complex utterances were not expected. In the case of 2. the children's capabilities being so limited, the overall capabilities and the milestones may have not been so different. In the case of 3, this was indeed a goal - to repeat the same test formula with different content and for the child to enjoy it.

The test details given by Carpenter, Fuji and Kataoka involve 6 type of test: a) the toybox - asking questions about objects in a toybox, b) conversation - the child's ability to engage in a naturalistic conversation, c) information gap - the child and the interviewer have different pictures that they cannot see what the other is holding and they must describe them to each other; d)categorization - to elicit description and comparison; e) storytelling - for more advanced children; and f) classroom role play.

Of all the six test, a) was probably the only one which could have been applied to the children with very basic English. As the test deign and application in this paper were done in 1994/5, the paper by Carpenter, Fuji and Kataoka had not yet been published. An additional and important factor in test design is also apparent: all six tests were done individually. This is normal in a school immersion situation; however, when children are only seen for less than an hour once a week, testing must be done in groups. In fact, in our test design, each cycle of 6 tests contained one test for individual testing; the rest were done in groups.

Test Design

The tests presented in this paper were designed to take into account the following factors:

1. Anxiety
Before creating the tests, many teachers of the program expressed concern that the tests may cause anxiety in the young children. The task in constructing the test model was to find a way of testing the children's oral proficiency in English that they had acquired from the specific course, in a manner that does not intimidate them and does not make them feel that they are being tested.

If the children would became anxious they may react in a way that would impede us from tapping the true trait. All tests and instructions to teachers were written with this precept in mind.

• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 1
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 2
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 3
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 4
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 5
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 6
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 7
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 8
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 9
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 10
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 11
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 12
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 13
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 14
• English for Children - Background and Goals - Part 15