Assessing Young Learners’ Language Competences
On 20-21 October 2011 a seminar on "Assessing Young Learners’ Language Competences" was held in Warsaw. The seminar, organized by IBE, was a part of a larger series of meetings entitled "Research and education policy".
The main aims of the seminar were:
- to exchange experiences concerning effective methods of assessing language competence levels of young learners,
- to discuss reliable assessment methods and accurate description of language achievements of students in middle schools and early education.
Special guests of the two-day seminar were experts and researchers in the field of young learners assessment: Louise Courtney of the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), Evelien Krikhaar from Expertisecentrum at Radboud University (the Netherlands), Peter Lenz from the Institute of Multilingualism of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and Lucilla Lopriore representing Roma Tre University (Italy).
The meeting was attended by nearly 80 participants, among whom were the representatives of the Ministry of Education, Central and Regional Examination Boards, language colleges and departments of Modern Languages. Among the guests were also numerous foreign language teachers from across the country.
Presentations:
- Magdalena Szpotowicz, PhD - "Assessing Young Learners’ Language Competences - introduction" (pdf)
- Peter Lenz - "A Language Assessment Kit – Relating to the CEFR for French and English" (pps)
- Lucilla Lopriore, PhD - "Young foreign language learners’ assessment: when teachers and research meet" (pdf)
- Louise Courtney - "Making the most of assessment: designing multi-purpose tasks for young language learners" (ppt)
- Evelien Krikhaa - "Elicitation and assessment of oral production in first and foreign language acquisition in Dutch primary schools" (pdf)
