Placement test

Teacher’s guideThis placement test is designed to help teachers decide at which level of English Unlimited new students should be placed.

The test contains:• 120writtenmultiple-choicequestions,20ateachlevelfromStartertoAdvanced(coveringCEFlevelsA1to

C1).ThequestionsfocusonthelanguagetaughtacrossthesixlevelsofEnglish Unlimited.

• anoralplacementtest,designedtobeusedinconjunctionwiththewrittentest.Thequestionsinthistestare linked to the goals in the English Unlimitedcoursebooks,whichinturnarebasedontheCEF‘can-do’statements.Theoraltestisdesignedtobeflexible.Thisshouldallowteacherstogetanoverviewofstudents’speakingabilityinorderto‘fine-tune’theirassessmentofthecorrectlevelatwhichtoplacestudents.

• keysandtablesforinterpretingscores.

Written test procedure1 Askthestudenttostartatthebeginningofthewrittentestandstopwhenthequestionsbecometoodifficult.

Allow30–40minutesforthetest.

2 MarkthetestandusethetablebelowtoplacethestudentprovisionallyatoneofthesixlevelsofEnglish Unlimited.

3 Usetheoralplacementtesttoconfirmoradjustthisplacement(seeOraltestprocedurebelow).

Starter Elementary Pre-intermediate

Intermediate Upper Intermediate

Advanced

Written test score

0–15 16–35 36–55 56–75 76–95 96+

1 Placement test Teacher’s guide Photocopiable © Cambridge University Press 2010

Oral test procedure1 Checkthestudent’swrittentestscoreandprovisionalplacement.

2 Askthestudenttheintroductoryquestionsandnotetheinformationonthescoresheet.

3 Askaminimumoffourquestionsfromthequestionbankthatcorrespondstotheleveloftheprovisionalplacement.

4 Encouragethestudenttogivefullanswers,bymeansofpromptsratherthandirectquestions.Allow5–10minutesperquestion,dependingonlevel.

5 Awardascoreforeachquestion,usingthebanddescriptorsbelow,interpreted at the relevant level.

Band descriptors Score

Insufficientsampleofspokenlanguage.Studentfailstounderstandquestion,evenwhenrepeated.

0

Evidenceofunderstandingatabasiclevel,butfrequentinaccuraciesingrammarandvocabularymayobscurethemessage.Significanthesitationandinaccuraciesinpronunciationimpedeunderstanding.Utterancesleftunextended.

1

Clearevidenceofcomprehension.Grammarandvocabularysufficienttoconveyintendedmeaningandextendanswerseffectively.Utterancesarereasonablyrelevantandcoherentwithonlyoccasionalhesitation.However,complexvocabularyandgrammaticalstructuresareavoided(exceptinobviouslywell-rehearsedutterances).

2

Questionsfullyunderstood.Accurateandappropriateuseofarangeofsimpleandcomplexgrammaticalformsandvocabularytodevelopresponsesfully.Utterancesintelligibleandlinked coherently and logically without undue hesitation.

3

6 Placethestudentasfollows:

Oral score Level

Mainly1s Onelevelbelow written score

Mainly2s Atsame level as written score

Mainly3s Onelevelabove written score

7 Wherethereisasignificantdiscrepancybetweenthestudent’swrittenscoreandoralperformance,teachersshouldusetheirprofessionaljudgementtoplacethestudentatthecorrectlevel.

8 TeachersmayliketoaskstudentsfortheirownassessmentoftheirlevelofEnglish,bearinginmind,however,thatthisjudgementislikelytobeverysubjective.

2 Placement test Teacher’s guide Photocopiable © Cambridge University Press 2010