Techniques Used to Assess Language Areas and Skills at the Lower-Primary Level: Research Results

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the issue of assessing young foreign language learners in primary school. First, it presents the most important factors and principles in assessing young learners as well as basic assessment methods and techniques. Then, it describes a study which investigated classroom-based assessment implemented to evaluate lower-primary learners of foreign languages. More specifically, following the first part of the study which focussed on the reasons, means and methods implemented to assess young language learners (Rokoszewska, in press), this paper reports the second part of the study which has dealt with techniques used to test young learners’ receptive and productive knowledge of particular language areas and the development of language skills. In general, the results indicate that teachers use a wide variety of techniques to test young learners’ language areas and skills. The techniques often come from ready-made pen-and-paper tests and are mostly appropriate to the age and level of the learners. Yet, the most common techniques used by the teachers focus on single language items and thus reflect the view of language as a collection of discrete items which are not connected into a meaningful discourse found in natural communication.