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A Framework for Young EFL Learners’ Diagnostic Assessment: ‘Can Do Statements’ and Task Types

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Assessing Young Learners of English: Global and Local Perspectives

Part of the book series: Educational Linguistics ((EDUL,volume 25))

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to present a framework for assessing young learners of foreign languages for diagnostic purposes. The first section outlines the most important trends in language assessment and describes the educational context where the project was implemented. Then, the chapter discusses how children between the ages of 6 and 12 develop in a foreign language and outlines the most important principles of assessing young language learners. The actual framework was designed for the four skills; it aimed to cover the first 6 years of primary education in Hungarian public schools. The document used the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR, 2001) as a point of departure and includes age-specific ‘can do statements’ and task types corresponding to them. Readers are encouraged to critically reflect on how the findings could be adopted in their own contexts.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to members of the team for developing the can do statements, drawing up the list of topics and task types based on curricula, teaching materials and research findings. The team included twelve anonymous classroom teachers with over a decade of teaching experience in Hungarian classrooms and the following experienced teachers of young learners and experts on assessment and early language learning research: Lidia Bors, Judit Font, Gabriella Hild, Csilla Kiss, Réka Lugossy, Ildikó Pathó, Gábor Szabó, Zsófia Turányi (Hungary) and four international experts: Heini-Marja Järvinen (Finnland), Lucilla Lopriore (Italy), Jelena Mihaljević Djigunović (Croatia), and Karmen Prizorn (Slovenia)

I am grateful to Jelena Mihaljević Djigunović for her helpful comments on the first draft of this chapter.

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  1. Institute of English Studies, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

    Marianne Nikolov

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  1. Marianne Nikolov
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  1. Dept. of English Applied Linguistics, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

    Marianne Nikolov

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Nikolov, M. (2016). A Framework for Young EFL Learners’ Diagnostic Assessment: ‘Can Do Statements’ and Task Types. In: Nikolov, M. (eds) Assessing Young Learners of English: Global and Local Perspectives. Educational Linguistics, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22422-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22422-0_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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