266 Part V: What Kind of Class Will I Have?
Now, I know what you’re thinking, ‘If the student can’t speak English, how
can she complete the test?’ Well, if all your students come from the same
language base, you can fairly easily organise a test in their mother tongue.
You can make the test visual by using pictures of different situations in which
they may use English (listening to lectures, using the phone and so on) and
ask students how comfortable they are in those situations. Rating systems
with smiley faces and frowning faces help to convey the point. Set the test
out so that it goes from really easy to gradually more difficult and the students
can stop when the questions get too tough.
You can engineer your test to cover areas such as:
✓ Grammar by offering a ‘complete the sentence’ exercise such as: ‘If I
improved my English, I.. .’.
With this question, you can test whether the student knows how to
make a sentence in the second conditional and you can find out a bit
about that person’s motivation for taking a course at the same time.
If the test contains very direct questions the student is likely to copy
from a grammar reference book. It works better when you sneak in the
tenses by asking about things you want to know about the student and
stating that she should reply with a complete sentence. For example, to
test the past simple tense ask:
When was the last time you studied English? Describe your lessons.
✓ Vocabulary knowledge centres around the dictionary, so ask something
like:
When you talk about the following topics, how often do you use your
dictionary?
- Family and friends: a little quite a lot often
- My job: a little quite a lot often
- My hobbies and interests: a little quite a lot often
- Shopping: a little quite a lot often
✓ Reading skills depend on comprehension, so ask questions such as:
What do you usually read in English? Say how easy or difficult it is to
understand.
✓ Writing includes spelling and formats, so present a scale from 1 to 5
where 1 is bad and 5 is excellent, and have students rate their abilities
on questions such as:
- How good is your spelling in English? 1 2 3 4 5
- Can you write formal letters? 1 2 3 4 5
- Can you write informal letters? 1 2 3 4 5
