Link to the PDF with test results.
So, here comes my last blog entry of this term and the last entry I do for my bachelor thesis.
And it's all about the second Oxford Young Learners Placement Test.
Again I bought those tests but since they are not meant for the same class to take again, I couldn't just assign my class again. I had to create a new class, add all their names again. Obviously I did something differently than last time because I did get some log in slips for each candidate but they looked totally different. So I tried one of them the day before because I didn't want to stand in front of the class not knowing how they should log in. Well, I clicked on the link for the test and started one of them by accident. So I took it, because the time is up after 80 minutes... I kind of started worrying about how the class would do because there were topics in there we didn't cover at all like the use of the past tense, propositions etc... I was cooking during the listening test so I just let it play and answered those questions. Our AuPair from the US came in at one point and because I had my hands full she asked me if she should click on one of those pictures. But she wanted to chose the wrong one because it was kind of tricky to get the right one. That made me think too because if even a native English speaking person falls into one of those traps it must be pretty hard. But still, I wanted to do this test again but it was kind of good seeing what those questions were about. Well it says that the test changes its level of difficulty according to how you do so these questions might just have been in there because I did the rest of the test well.
So, 13 of my 17 students took the test. 3 still had the flu and one poor fellow had broken his leg. So this is why my chart contains only 13 kids. What interested me most was their change of level and points. So I tried to colour code this. 0 or even negative changes are red (how terrible!!! but there are a few!!!) 1-4 dark orange, 5-9 lighter orange, 10-14 yellow, 15-19 light green and above 20 dark green.
Language Use:
What does not bother me at all are the -10 of this one boy. He's the one that's freed of learning targets and the A2 level he had acheived was probably just lucky guessing. He even told me after the test that he had no clue in the first part of the test and just guessed the answers and that's ok. What does hurt is the -8, the -2 and even the +1 because that's not much of a change. The -8 is a girl who is having a hard time at the moment when it comes to taking tests but that's no excuse at all. The only thing that's consoling me a little is that all three were B1 and are still B1 so there level was already rather high.
Then I have three more changes that are a little below average 7, 9, and 9 BUT all those three kids have made it to the maximum! They have changed from a high level to an even higher. So they all got a B1+ now. Then I got +16, +16, and +17 which I think is pretty amazing and what even strikes me are +24, +31 and +45!!! Wow, one girl had 31 points in her first test and 76 in her second. That's from A1 to B1 in half a year :-)))
Listening:
Well in the listening I didn't get a negative result. This one girl which made such progress in language use got the same points for listening. But in listening, pretty much all of them had a B1 in the first test so there was not much to improve there but still, all of them are above 70 points even 8 have 79 and above. The only girl that didn't get a B1 last time improved the most so she made it from an A2 to a B1+. This one boy who is freed of learning targets had improved by 25 points too but I don't really know how I should weigh that. Was it just luck or did he really profit that much? Well I cannot kind of ignore his -10 at language use and than say that his +25 in listening was because I did a good job. I'll just let that stand there.
Average:
Well in the average, all of them have improved. Some a little more and some a little less. It's interesting though how some improved tremendously in one part and stagnated in the other. But overall I'm happy with the outcome of the test especially since I have seen that it can be tricky and that we have not covered some many of those topics that were asked for in the language use part.
