Assignment 9.1

Diagnostic Assessment of Learners' Needs

Introduction and Class Profile

The diagnostic assessment was carried out in October 2007 with a group of five learners at South Tyneside College, who had all been initially assessed at upper pre-Entry level. The class was multi-lingual, comprising of a married North Korean couple, a Somalian and two Bangladeshis. All were literate in their respective first languages.


Mohammed is a 36-year-old Bangladeshi who has lived in Britain for fourteen years. Although he has very weak written skills, his job requires him to speak some English and he has already passed the Entry 1 Speaking and Listening Exam.

Abdus is 35 and also from Bangladesh. In common with Mohammed he has lived in Britain for over ten years, works in a restaurant and is required to communicate in English. He has previously studied at Entry 1 level but wants to improve his writing skills, which are significantly weaker than his speaking ability.

Min-jae and Young-suh are both 50 and from North Korea. They arrived in Britain six months ago unable to speak any English, although they have since participated in an intensive summer-long course.

Halima is a 46-year-old Somalian. She has lived in the UK for five years and has previously studied at pre-Entry level.

The Diagnostic Test

The first part of the assessment covered listening, reading and writing skills. Afterwards, the students’ speaking ability was assessed individually in short interviews with the teacher. The diagnostic test was adapted from one developed by Hackney Community College for use with Entry 1 students. As the students had been initially assessed at near Entry 1 level, and would be working towards Entry 1 targets, I chose the assessment to give an indication of their current abilities in relation to a number of core curriculum standards. I omitted the final part of the assessment (where students are given a page to write about themselves) as the learners’ ability to give personal information orally and on a basic form was already been assessed.
.
Speaking and listening skills assessed: Lr/E1.2 listen for detail to extract specific information; Sc/E1.4 make statements of fact clearly; Lr/E1.4 listen and respond to requests for personal information.

Students are given seven questions, each with three or four pictures representing possible answers. The teacher reads a short narrative including one of the words, which the students must circle.

Students were given a short interview in which they were asked for details about themselves (What’s your address? When were you born? Where do you come from? When did you come to England?), their occupation, family members and reasons for learning English.

Reading: Rt/E1.1 follow a short narrative; Rw/E1.2 decode simple words; Rw/E1.3 recognise the letters of the alphabet in both lower and upper case.

Students read a short text giving personal information about a man and his family and write the answers to five comprehension questions, using full sentences if possible.
Students read two appointment slips for a doctor’s surgery and copy information about times, days and dates into a chart.

Writing: Ws/E1.1 construct a simple sentence; Ws/ E1.2 punctuate a simple sentence with a capital letter and full stop; Ww/E1.1 spell correctly some personal key words; Ww/E1.2 write the letters of the alphabet using upper and lower case.

Students copy information from the board onto the front page of the assessment and write their own names.
Students have to fill in a basic form asking for personal information.
Students look at a picture of a classroom and write down five of the objects they can see.

Students’ Strengths and Weaknesses

At the beginning of the assessment, Mohammed was able to recognise and use both upper and lower case letters when copying from the board. He had no problems with the listening test, correctly answering six out of seven questions (his one mistake was due to a lexical problem in discerning between a flat and a bungalow). In the reading and writing sections, he was able to recognise and copy the necessary details from the doctor’s slip and extract the main lexical information from the reading passage. However, in answering the questions he was unable to write in full sentences, or to use capital letters or full stops correctly. Similarly, while he completed the form asking for personal details appropriately, his use of upper and lower case letters was fairly random in all but nationality and post code.

Although he struggled with sentence formation and capitalisation, Mohammed’s spelling was one of his strengths, as evidenced by words such as mirror and carpet in the classroom objects section.

During the interview, Mohammed answered all the questions without the need for prompting or re-phrasing, and was able to give further information about his place of work and the names and educational background of his children.

Abdus’s reading and writing was markedly weaker than his speaking. In the interview he was able to give personal details, and extend answers to talk about feelings and opinions when asked about his family and occupation. In the listening, he extracted simple words relating to transport, numbers, days of the week and places of work, though not types of housing.

His use of capitalisation is random, as seen in the sentence I am WORK IN FACTORY HACKNEY. He also mixes upper and lower case letters when writing the personal pronoun I, commonly adds the verb am after I when talking about habits and regular actions (a tendency also evident in the interview), and was unable to punctuate sentences with full stops. He scored no marks in the reading, despite assistance.

Young-suh’s written work shows some knowledge of sentence structure and basic grammar (He is 28 years old), the use of upper and lower case letters (Korean), punctuation (I’ve) and the spelling of familiar words (South Shields; table). She is able to write legibly and makes attempts to use an ordinal number (21th) when writing her date of birth. In addition to being able to follow the narrative at the end of the assessment, she extracted all of the information from the doctor’s appointment slip. Her listening work showed some confusion between the numbers 14 and 40.

In the interview, she was able to understand and respond to all the questions, though she displayed several phonological problems related to her first language: lack of intonation, inserting vowel sounds after words ending in consonants (for instance yes /jesə/), and the substitution of /b/ for /v/ and /p/ for /f/.

With the exception of the question on house types (which none of the students answered correctly), Min-jae was able to hear and extract all of the key information in the listening assessment. His speaking ability was broadly similar to Young-suh’s, transferring the same phonological features from his first language. In the interview, he required no rephrasing or prompting but was often unable to give more than a few words in reply to questions. He did, however, display an awareness of short answer forms in responses such as Yes, I do and No, I can’t.

In the reading and writing sections, he made attempts at more difficult lexical items (bucket; watch; desk). His spelling was relatively weak. He was able to extract most of the information from the narrative, but unable to answer the questions in full sentences.

Halima struggled with the listening. Although she was able to answer questions on times, transport and days of the week, she couldn’t pick out the word stress in the number 14 or discern the phonological difference between the letters D and E. Her writing showed some basic spelling mistakes (tow children), although she was largely able to use upper and lower case letters appropriately. Her reading skills were slightly stronger than Abdus’s, extracting the day of the doctor’s appointment but not the time or date. She was able to capitalise, structure (spacing and capital letters in the post code) and spell her address with only minor problems.

In the interview, Halima was able to give basic answers to questions about herself and her family, but unable to extend answers to express feelings or opinions. She required some prompting and rephrasing on the questions relating to her place of birth and reasons for studying English.

Appropriate Language Learning Outcomes

Halima, Mohammed and Abdus have literacy needs relating particularly to their writing skills. Learning aims for all three would include spelling familiar words correctly (Ww/E1.1), writing letters in upper and lower case (Ww/E1.2), and constructing and punctuating a simple sentence (Ws/E1.1; Ws/E1.2; Ws/E1.3).

Writing targets for Young-suh and Min-jae would include spelling and the construction of simple sentences. A further aim would be to write a simple composition (Wt/E1.1) on a familiar topic such as a family member.

With regard to reading skills, reading and recognising simple sentences (Rs/E1.1) might be an appropriate precursor to written work for Abdus and Halima, who both struggled to recognise key words in the assessment. The students were all able to follow most of the short narrative (Rt/E1.1) in the diagnostic, but further practice is needed in word order and basic grammatical structures.

The students’ ability to ask questions was not assessed. Weaknesses identified in the interview were in asking for clarification (Sc/E1.3), using stress, intonation and the sounds of English to be understood in simple exchanges (Sc/E1.1) and expressing feelings and opinions (Sd/E1.1). The students’ ability to engage in discussions was appropriate for the level and they were all able to make simple statements of fact (Sc/E1.4). Differentiated targets for Mohammed and Abdus could include making requests (Sc/E1.2) and giving descriptions (Sc/E1.4) of their workplace and local area.

As the students were able to extract specific detail and respond to requests for personal information, appropriate learning targets could be taking part in social conversations and a limited number of formal exchanges (Lr/E1.5).

In a short follow-up interview given after the assessment the learners identified learning targets such as improving pronunciation, using basic grammar while speaking and being able to write in full sentences, using capital letters and full stops.

Evaluation of Diagnostic Assessment

Although the assessment gave a broad indication of the students’ abilities in all four skills it had a number of shortcomings, primarily the over emphasis on reading and writing. One major improvement would be for pairs of students to interview each other as a follow-up to the initial speaking assessment, testing their ability to ask questions to obtain information (Sc/E1.3) and to take part in social interaction (Lr/E1.5).

In the listening, the first question was clearly not appropriate for the level. A better test of their lexical knowledge would have been circle an item of furniture. One positive aspect of the assessment was the testing of the students’ ability to identify word stress to aid understanding (Lr/E1.2) and to discriminate between sounds.

In the reading and writing sections I felt the doctor’s appointment slip was an unnecessary duplication of the comprehension questions on the final page, both assessing the students’ abilities to extract information from written texts. In retrospect, I should have asked the students to write a short text about themselves, which would have assessed their ability to compose simple texts (Wt/E1.1) and also tested their use of basic verb forms without giving them scope to merely copy from an existing text. The remaining sections – classroom objects and filling in personal details on a basic form – were, I felt, appropriate for the level.

Finally, in addition to the suggested extension to the speaking assessment, the initial interview itself was too focused on the students’ ability to provide basic personal information. After some initial requests for personal details, the interview could be extended to check understanding of imperatives and simple instructions (Lr/E1.3) and to give descriptions (Sc/E1.4) rather than just state facts, for instance asking students to describe their house or how they travel to class.

Word Count: 1,959