Assessing components of multi-(lingual) competence in young learners

Abstract

Over the past decades, the concept of multi-(lingual) competence1 has been the focus of significant academic interest. Ever since Cook introduced the notion of multi-competence in the 1990s, the concept has attracted a lot of attention and has been discussed extensively at the theoretical level. At the practical level, however, multi-competence has not been investigated much, if at all. In fact, there is a very distinct lack of empirical research, especially into what constitutes multi-(lingual) competence in young learners and into assessment of multi-(lingual) competencies in these learners. With this paper we hope to contribute to reducing the gap between the wealth of scholarly debates and theorizations on the one hand and the concomitant dearth of practical applications on the other. The paper discusses multi-(lingual) competences in young learners at the primary level and proposes a special assessment tool, which allows for components of young learners’ multi-(lingual) competence to be measured in a systematic way. Potential advantages of instantiating multilingual pedagogies and multilingual benchmarks for assessment are examined and suggestions for holistic testing paradigms are provided. In developing our arguments in favour of a multi-competence approach to learning and performance evaluation, we adopt a holistic DMM (Dynamic Model of Multilingualism)-informed perspective.