English Language Proficiency Assessments for Young Learners

Mikyung Kim Wolf, Yuko Goto Butler, Mikyung Kim Wolf, Yuko Goto Butler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138940369
• eBook ISBN: 9781317379034
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

English Language Proficiency Assessments for Young Learners provides both theoretical and empirical information about assessing the English language proficiency of young learners. Using large-scale standardized English language proficiency assessments developed for international or U.S. contexts as concrete examples, this volume illustrates rigorous processes of developing and validating assessments with considerations of young learners' unique characteristics. In this volume, young learners are defined as school-age children from approximately 5 to 13 years old, learning English as a foreign language (EFL) or a second language (ESL). This volume also discusses innovative ways to assess young learners' English language abilities based on empirical studies, with each chapter offering stimulating ideas for future research and development work to improve English language assessment practices with young learners. English Language Proficiency Assessments for Young Learners is a useful resource for students, test developers, educators, and researchers in the area of language testing and assessment.

Section 1
Introduction

1
An Overview of English Language Proficiency Assessments for Young Learners

Mikyung Kim Wolf and Yuko Goto Butler

Learning English is vital for school-age children today given both the increasing globalization of academic, governmental, and economic affairs and the associated rise in the global profile of English as a lingua franca, as well as the potential for personal enrichment that comes with learning any foreign language. In countries where English is not an official language but a foreign language (EFL), English language classes have typically been included as a regular curriculum component in middle and high schools. Furthermore, some countries have begun to introduce an English course into elementary school curricula in consideration of the benefits of earlier language education (Rea-Dickins, 2000). In countries where English is a language of daily communication, formal instruction of English as a second language (ESL) in primary and secondary schools is commonly required to serve students whose first or home language is not English. Particularly in the ESL context, acquisition of English language proficiency (ELP) is essential for school-age children not only to achieve academic success but also to participate in social activities.

As the need for learning English among young learners increases, so does the need for appropriate measures for informing relevant stakeholders (e.g., learners, parents, and educators) of the learners’ English proficiency levels. High-quality English language proficiency assessments (referred to as ELP assessments hereafter) can be instrumental at the institutional level in planning curriculum and instruction and placing students into appropriate programs. ELP assessments can also be useful at the individual level, supporting students, parents, and teachers to improve their English language learning and teaching. However, while there is a growing demand for standardized ELP assessments as an objective measure to gauge each student’s level of English language development, extra care must be exercised in the development and use of standardized ELP assessments for young school-age children considering their unique characteristics compared to adult learners.

To address the increased need for appropriate assessment of English language proficiency in young students, this volume provides both theoretical and empirical information about the processes involved in the development of assessments targeting young school-age English language learners. For the purposes of this volume, we define the category of young English language learners as encompassing school-age children from the elementary to middle school grades (i.e., kindergarten to eighth grade in the U.S. system, ranging approximately from ages 5 to 13¹). Certainly, there are very young children who learn English as a second language (L2, whether as ESL or EFL) before the beginning of their formal school education. However, we focus here on school-age children, as they are becoming increasingly exposed to standardized ELP assessments. Further, we include students at the upper elementary and middle school grade levels (around ages 9 to 13) as “young learners” in this volume because these students are still developing their cognitive abilities and gaining critical social/cultural experiences—a fact which needs to be carefully considered in the assessment of their English language proficiency.

This volume focuses primarily on the development and validation of large-scale, standardized ELP assessments for young students in both EFL and ESL contexts. A number of international standardized ELP assessments have been developed and are being used with young students (see Nikolov, 2016, for a discussion of global ELP assessments for young learners). In order to discuss the unique challenges and issues faced in developing ELP assessments for this population in real-world contexts, we consider research on ELP assessments developed for young students by ETS as concrete examples (e.g., the TOEFL^® Primary™ tests, the TOEFL Junior^® tests, and U.S. K–12 ELP assessments). Additionally, this volume includes chapters on nonstandardized assessments in order to facilitate the discussion of future research and development areas for innovative ELP assessments for young students. More details on the content and structure of this volume are provided later in this chapter.

We envision the main audience of this volume to be all those interested in the development and validation of ELP assessments for young students. Thus, this audience includes test developers, language testing researchers, and practitioners. We have compiled a collection of theoretical and empirical research papers that can serve as a useful resource to learn about the assessment development process as well as issues in need of further investigation in the assessment of young English language learners.

In this introductory chapter, we provide a brief description of young language learners’ characteristics in relation to the development and use of ELP assessments. We also describe a few key aspects to consider in the development and use of standardized ELP assessments given young learners’ characteristics. This background information is intended to provide context for the chapters to follow. In addition, we offer an overview of each chapter in order to help readers better understand the range of interrelated ELP assessment development and validation issues discussed throughout this volume.

Characteristics of Young Learners to Consider in the Development of English Language Proficiency Assessments

The characteristics of young learners that need to be considered in the development and use of ELP assessments may be described largely in terms of the following aspects: (1) English language learning contexts and language ability, (2) cognitive development, and (3) affective factors. We provide a brief account of each aspect to point out specific features and challenges in developing young learners’ ELP assessments.

English Language Learning Contexts and Language Abilities of Young Learners

In developing an ELP assessment, the definition of the assessment construct is dependent upon the specific purposes for which the assessment will be used and target population who will take it (Bachman & Palmer, 1996, 2010). Suppose that the purpose of an ELP assessment is to measure young school-age learners’ English language abilities for communication in school settings. The construct of young learners’ English language abilities, then, needs to be defined with reasonable expectations about what young learners know and are able to do in English in the targeted contexts. Young learners’ English language abilities and development are shaped not only by learners’ personal attributes but also by the contexts in which their English language learning takes place (particularly by their formal school education) (McKay, 2006).

In both EFL and ESL contexts, national or local standards (and curricula) have been the major impetus that influences the ways in which young school-age students learn English (Butler, 2015; McKay, 2000; Nikolov, 2016). In many EFL countries, English curricula in schools place most emphasis on developing students’ communicative language ability (Baldauf, Kaplan, Kamwangamaly, & Bryant, 2012; Enever, Moon, & Raman, 2009; McKay, 2000). On the other hand, studies have suggested that instruction and assessment with young students are not always carried out as intended in national curricula (e.g., Butler, 2015; Choi, 2008; Huang, 2011; Szpotowicz, 2012). For instance, in a four-year observational/interview study with EFL teachers from seven schools in Poland, Szpotowicz (2012) reported that the elementary grades (i.e., ages 7 to 10) contained very limited interactive oral language tasks as classroom activities. Thus, when students in the study were asked to perform interactive tasks in English during class, they were limited to using formulaic chunks or repeating memorized chunks of utterances. This finding is consistent with McKay’s (2006) observation that young learners (especially in early elementary grades) tend to rely heavily on the formulaic language system and unanalyzed, memorized chunks to convey their intended meaning. In the discussion of her findings, Szpotowicz notes that teachers seemed to focus more on teaching foundational skills for students in the earlier grades. Campfield (2006) also notes that form-based instruction is prevalent in EFL contexts and that evaluating young students’ oral production skills can be challenging partly due to young students’ instructional settings.

In EFL contexts, young learners’ target language use domains are largely bound to school contexts where major interactions take place with peers and teachers in English classrooms. These young learners’ opportunities to engage in English are likely limited to textbook and instructional activities. This limited and unique exposure to the target language influences the way in which young learners develop both their proficiency as well as their background knowledge on social norms associated with the target language use.

In ESL contexts, young learners likely encounter more linguistically and cognitively complex language tasks as they are immersed in English-medium environments both inside and potentially outside of school. In K–12 school settings in the U.S., for example, ELP standards are rigorous, including the language skills that students need to meaningfully engage in various disciplinary areas (Bailey & Huang, 2011; Hakuta, Santos, & Fang, 2013; Wolf & Farnsworth, 2014). For instance, ELP standards for kindergarten contain “supporting own opinions and evaluating others’ opinions in speaking and writing” (California Department of Education, 2012, p. 27).

Despite the enriched input that characterizes ESL contexts, it is important to note that young learners do not necessarily share common background knowledge and experiences (Lenski, Ehlers-Zavala, Daniel, & Sun-Irminger, 2006). In English-speaking countries, young ESL students are a highly heterogeneous group in terms of their linguistic, cultural, and educational background. When it comes to U.S. schools, recent statistics show that over 300 home languages are reported by K–12 English learners (National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, 2011). The length of students’ U.S. residence is varied. Some students are themselves immigrants, whereas others were born in the U.S. as children of immigrants. Students’ formal schooling experience also varies; recently-arrived students may include both those with limited/interrupted formal education as well as those who have acquired academic literacy skills and content learning in their L1 (Wolf et al., 2014). Thus, even among middle schoolers, there are students who are still beginning to develop foundational English skills. The heterogeneous background of young English language learners implies that there are various contextual factors that affect these students’ ELP attainment.

In both EFL and ESL contexts, younger students (i.e., in the early elementary grades) who also begin to acquire L1 literacy tend to develop comprehension skills (particularly listening skills) faster than productive skills in the L2 (Cameron, 2001; Molloy, 2015). Considering previous research findings on the transfer effect of L1 on L2 acquisition (e.g., Ellis, 2008; Gass & Selinker, 1994; Tessier, Duncan, & Paradis, 2013), young students’ L1 development might influence their L2 development in oral language and literacy skills in different ways. Bialystok (2001) also illustrates that young learners at the early stages of L2 learning begin to acquire foundational skills such as phonological and decoding skills with simple vocabulary and sentences.

Considering the ways young students learn the target language, the construct of an ELP assessment for young learners should be defined differently from that of adult assessments, particularly with respect to the types and degree of ELP competence specified (Butler, 2016). Following the communicative language ability models that consist of language knowledge and strategic competence to use language communicatively to achieve specific purposes (Bachman & Palmer, 2010; Canale & Swain, 1980), young learners’ language knowledge and strategic competence are continuously evolving as their cognitive maturity develops and as their range of instructional experiences expands. For instance, young learners’ pragmatic and sociolinguistic knowledge (e.g., degree of formality and turn-taking conventions), as part of language knowledge, are likely different from that of adult learners (Butler & Zeng, 2014; Lenski, Ehlers-Zavala, Daniel, & Sun-Irminger, 2006; Szpotowicz, 2012). In the next section, we describe the cognitive characteristics of young learners that also have important implications for the development of ELP assessments.

Cognitive Development in Young Learners

Young learners’ cognitive development is an important consideration in designing ELP assessments, as their cognitive abilities impact their L2 development as well as their performance on assessments. Cognitive domains encompass multiple areas such as visual-spatial processing, working memory, short-term memory, metalinguistic awareness, attention, abstract reasoning/concept formation, and executive functions (Barac, Bialystok, Castro, & Sanchez, 2014). One’s cognitive ability develops along with the maturation of brain development. Thus, young learners’ growing cognitive capacities must be carefully considered in the assessment of their ELP.

Research has shown that young learners’ cognitive capacity is highly associated with their language development (e.g., Case, Kurland, & Goldberg, 1982; Garlock, Walley, & Metsala, 2001). For example, Garlock et al. (2001) found that the young learners in their study (ages 6 and 7) demonstrated a strong positive relationship between working memory and language abilities in phonological awareness, vocabulary size, and reading. Metalinguistic abilities also improved with the increased cognitive capacity. As described earlier, young learners have limitations in recognizing and extracting general structures across linguistic forms and meanings, with a tendency to use unanalyzed chunks (McKay, 2006). Thus, upper elementary or middle school students, whose cognitive and metalinguistic abilities are more developed, may acquire vocabulary and complex syntactic structures more efficiently than younger students (Bialystok, 2001; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1997).

In addition, younger students’ cognitive abilities typically are not mature enough to formulate structured representations or abstract concepts (Craik & Bialystok, 2006). Concrete objects with sensory supports are more readily accessible to younger students than abstract concepts in their L2 development and assessment. As an example of young learners’ abstract conceptualization and reasoning, young learners have a “different concept of time and sequence” (Molloy, 2015, p. 4). Citing Orbach and Lamb (2007), who showed that children develop their ability to think flexibly (back and forth) about sequences of events at around 9 years old, Molloy argues that language learning or assessment activities f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• List of Illustrations
• Section 1 Introduction
• Section 2 Theoretical Basis and Assessment Frameworks
• Section 3 Empirical Studies for Validity Evidence
• Section 4 Future Assessments and Innovations for Young Learners
• Section 5 Conclusion
• Subject Index