Testing, testing
Today many children in Norway took a national test to measure their abilities in English. The example below was released by the Education department to help students in the 5th Grade (aged 9 and 10) prepare for the examination. This question, number 12, comes after questions asking the children to identify farm animals – cats, dogs, goats, pigs, etc. and a series asking them identify colors. As you can see, this one also relies heavily on the children’s familiarity with color words. The words T-shirt and jacket are so close to the Norwegian words for the same objects that this question cannot really be a test of ‘clothing words’. The lack of distractors – possible answers that are incorrect, but that force the student to think for a minute (in this question, for example, a distractor might be a blond girl in a red T-shirt and green jacket or a brown eyed boy in a red T shirt and blue jacket) – makes this question almost impossible to answer
incorrectly.
The questions do get a bit more difficult although almost all of the questionsrely on English words that resemble the Norwegian ones. The children I know who took the exam all indicated that, with the exception of one or two of the later questions, they thought the test easy. Statistically, children do well on the English portion of the national tests.
It is difficult to know what level of second language proficiency should be expected of 9 and 10 year old who have been learning a language since they were 6. Certainly the format, brightly colored, clickable pictures with clear instructions, seems child-friendly and age appropriate. The test is really a vocabulary test, asking them to manipulate objects, identify the names for pictures and answer simple comprehension questions based upon readings. Although not complicated, some of the readings are quite long and do require the kids to focus for an amount of time. The test requires no grammar, which is a shame. Students are not asked to tell the difference between ‘on’ or ‘between’. They do not have to identify the past tense of a regular verb. This seems like a missed opportunity.
We will never really know how our children did, or even how the children in our school did as a whole. Perhaps this is another missed opportunity.
