Testing and Assessment material

New Language Leader contains a full suite of easy to

use, flexible testing and assessment material. There
are two types of tests available to use.

Unit Tests
These short tests are available for every unit,
reviewing the language taught, providing some
integrated skills assessment, and enabling students to
assess how well they are learning the material, and to
identify remedial areas for follow up.

Mid-Course and End of Course Reviews

These tests, written using competency descriptors
from the Pearson General English Syllabus, are
designed to assess students progress through longer
periods of the course, and help them see how their
progress is related to real-life language competence
goals. If carried out under controlled conditions, they
can form the basis of a higher-stakes institutional
assessment. The tests focus on all the main skills and
on language use, with wide coverage and realistic
skills activities.
There are also two ways to deliver the tests to your
students. These are:

Printable PDF Tests

Full question papers, answer keys, and marking
guidelines are provided for classroom set-ups where
students need to take a paper-based test under
teacher-controlled conditions, for teacher marking.

MyEnglishLab Tests
If you are using MyEnglishLab with your students,
the same test content is also available within
MyEnglishLab. The tests can be assigned for
completion at home, for low-stakes testing, or they
can be done under controlled conditions in a
classroom or self-access centre where students have
access to a computer each. The tests have automated
marking, saving valuable teacher time. The exception
to this is the speaking and writing sections, which are
submitted to the teacher for marking.
The content of the testing and assessment is the same,
whether you use printable PDFs or MyEnglishLab.
The following outline describes how to deliver the
tests if using the printable versions on the Teachers
Resource Site. Instructions for delivering tests in the
MyEnglishLab can also be found on the Teachers
Resource Site.

The Unit Tests

Each Unit Test is designed to take approximately 30
minutes of class time. Since these are low-stakes
language reviews, they do not necessarily have to be
carried out in test conditions, but might also be set
as a homework worksheet Each test covers language
taught in the unit, and the Integrated Skills section
will be based on unit topics. Each test has a Grammar
section worth 15 marks, a Vocabulary section worth
15 marks, and an Integrated Skills section worth 10
marks and learners get a total mark out of 40. We do
not specify a pass or fail mark for these tests, but
results should be treated as a way of directing
students to identify their strong and weak points, and
language areas they might need to revisit.

The Mid-Course and End of Course

Assessments
These are designed to form the basis of assessment,
and so consideration will need to be given to how
you set up these tests in your own institutional
context. The following outline refers to setting up
tests when delivered in printed form to students.
The Assessments were created using descriptors of
language competence from the Pearson General
English Syllabus, which in turn is mapped to the
Pearson Scale of English and the Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages.
The Mid-Course and End of course Assessments each
consist of five sections, and there is a total of 100
marks available.
The distribution of marks and suggested timings for
these Assessments follow.
Section A:
Listening

15 marks

10-15 minutes

Section B:
Reading

15 marks

20 minutes

Section C:
Language

30 marks

30 minutes

Section D:
Writing

20 marks

30 minutes

Section E:
Speaking

20 marks

6-8 minutes (per

student)

New Language Leader Testing & Assessment Elementary

The full Assessment should take approximately 100105 minutes (1 hour 40 1 hour 45 minutes). There
are 100 marks available which means that if all
sections of the Assessment are carried out, the
number of marks award will be a percentage mark.

Suggested mark thresholds

The following mark thresholds are a guideline for
students performance only. Your own institutional
requirements may be different.
85% or more: Grade A (Distinction)
This is a very strong performance which suggests
that the student, in a live language use situation or a
higher stakes test, would be able to perform above
the appropriate level of the course, and would be
likely to make further good progress with the
language.
75% or more: Grade B (Merit)
This is a fairly strong performance which suggests
that the student would be able to use language in
most situations described in the GSE at the level of
the course, though with occasional difficulty.
65% or more: Grade C (Pass)
This is an adequate performance which might be
used as a gateway mark for students to progress to a
further level of the course, but additional remedial
work and study would probably be required if you
were to be able to say with confidence that this
student could perform satisfactorily in live language
use at the level of the course.
Less than 65%: Grade D (Fail)
This is an unsatisfactory performance. In the Midcourse Assessment, this is early warning of problems
with this students progress which could be targeted
for further study. In the End of Course Assessment,
more intensive remedial study and further
assessment will probably be required to ensure
progress into, or at a higher level of the course.

Organising the Assessments

There are different ways of arranging this depending
on your classroom and institutional situation.
All-in-one Assessment
The written part of the test (sections A-D) could be
carried out under supervision in a classroom, with
each student being called away to a separate room
individually for the Speaking Assessment. This is
likely to need two teachers to be present, one to
invigilate Sections A-D and one to interview and
assess the Speaking (Section E). Allow 105 minutes of
classroom time for this option.

In this case the students are handed sections A-D at

the beginning of the Assessment. The teacher who is
carrying out the Speaking Assessment should retain
section E and the Score Cards.
The teacher who is invigilating in the Section A-D
should begin by allowing the students time to read
the questions in the Listening section, and then
playing each recording in the Listening TWICE. After
the Listening section is complete, students continue
with the other sections. Use the timings above to
remind students when they should be moving on to
the Language and Writing sections.
The Assessment should be carried out without
students having access to coursebooks, dictionaries or
other reference material.
Written Assessment with separate Speaking
Assessment
It may prove more practical to carry out Sections A-D
in a single 90-95 minute session, with the Speaking
Assessment (Section E) taking place on a different
day. The class of students can be engaged in selfaccess work and then called aside for the Speaking
Assessment one by one.
No Speaking Assessment
It may prove impractical in your teaching context to
carry out a Speaking Assessment one by one for
individual students. In this case, the mark for the
assessment will be out of 80, which can be converted,
if you wish, to a percentage (divide the score by 80,
then multiply by 100).
Assessment delivered as separate papers
You may feel that a long assessment places more
pressure than is appropriate on students, and decide
to deliver the test as separate papers over several
lessons (a Reading & Listening paper, a Language
Use paper, a Writing paper, a Speaking Assessment).

Running the Mid-Course and End of Course

Speaking Assessments
Each Speaking Assessment is designed to take 6-8
minutes as a live assessment for a student together
with a teacher acting as Assessor.
Procedure:
1 The Speaking Assessment should take place in a
quiet room free of other students.
2 The Assessor and Student should sit facing each
other at a table. The Assessor should have a copy
of Section E and the students Score Card. Both
Assessor and student should have a pen.

New Language Leader Testing & Assessment Elementary

3 The Assessor should greet the student and pass

him or her Section E: Speaking. Say: Read the
instructions. Ill ask you questions about these things in
a few minutes. First you have two minutes to think
about what you want to say. You can make notes if you
like.
4 Allow the student to read the prompts and make
notes. After two minutes, say: Okay, can we start?
5 Ask the student the first question. When the
student has finished answering the question, make
a discreet note of your scores for the question, and
ask the next question.
6 When the students answer to the final question
has reached a natural conclusion, you can say:
Thank you very much. Thats the end of the test.
Question script:
The scripted questions for both Assessments are
below. If you feel that students are give short and
inadequate answers to question, you may want to use
the follow up questions (in square brackets) to
prompt them to expand on what they have said, or
use phrases like: Can you tell me a bit more about that?
Note that if significant prompting is required to elicit
an adequate answer, then this should affect the
Content mark for that question.
Similarly, if a student is talking too long in answer to
one of the questions, so that you are concerned you
will not be able to complete the assessment in the
time slot, you may interrupt gently with a phrase like:
Thats fine. Lets move on to the next question. / We need
to move on to the next question.
Mid-course Assessment
1 So, tell me about yourself. [Where you are from?
What do you do?]
2 Tell me about your best friend. [Whats he/she like?
What does he/she look like?]
3 What did you do the last time you met?
4 Whats your favourite TV programme or film and
why do you like it?
5 Now the last question. How do you think your life
will change over the next ten years?
End of Course Assessment
1 Whats your favourite invention?
2 How would your life be different without [it / this
invention]?
3 What do you plan to do after you finish this course?
4 Whats your ideal job?
5 Why do you think youd be good at [it / this job]?

How to award scores in the Speaking Assessment

For each question in each Assessment, there are four
marks available and each Speaking Assessment
consists of five questions. Therefore, there are twenty
marks in total for each Speaking Assessment.
The Content mark for each question should be
awarded as follows:
Score
0
1

Performance
The student does not answer question /
The answer is irrelevant to the question
The student answers the question in part,
though there may be some missing
information or irrelevant information.
The student answers question in full, with
supporting detail and without too much
irrelevant information.

The Effective Communication mark for each

question should be awarded as follows:
Score
0
1

Performance
The students answer is too difficult to
understand / incoherent
The students answer can be understood
without too much strain on listener,
although there may be frequent errors and
problems of structure
The students answer can be easily
understood, and shows a level of fluency
and accuracy appropriate for the target
level of the student. Although errors and
disfluencies may occur, they do not place a
significant strain on the listener.

The marks for the student should be recorded on the

Score Card, and then aggregated into the total
Assessment mark out of 100.

Following up the Assessments

We believe that assessment is most useful when it is
used to inform learning, identify strengths as well as
weaknesses, and provide useful direction for future
study. Tests should have concrete outcomes which
positively reinforce learning. The teacher has an
important role to ensure that this happens.
Ideally, students scores can be placed in the
Scorecard, providing a profile of their performance in
which the strong and weaker skills are identified. If
your teaching context allows it, a short one to one
session with each student is highly worthwhile, in
which areas to target for improvement can be
discussed, and suggestions made for follow-up work.

New Language Leader Testing & Assessment Elementary