Dear Lynn, dear all,
A lot of good points have been made by our colleagues here. I totally agree
that it isn't always helpful to 'label' a student, that good classroom
practice is good for all our learners, and that (most) Educational
Psychologists don't have the tools to assess multilingual learners. (The
standardised tests they commonly use are designed and normed for an
English-speaking population - using an interpreter won't change that.)
Having said that, there are still occasions when it might be useful to
explore why a learner is experiencing difficulties, and you are not alone in
wondering how best to assess multilingual learners. In my college (Blackpool
and the Fylde College), we had several Polish students who had been assessed
in their own country and wanted to apply for exam access arrangements. This
led me to wonder how we could provide an equivalent opportunity for all our
students.
So....This year I have been running a pilot project, working with both the
ESOL department and the Learning Support Assessment team, to see if we can
come up with ways of assessing our learners, that are not language- or
culture-dependent (as far as is possible, given the context in which we are
working!). I've been looking at how students work in their own/preferred
languages, (although without interpreters - our 250 students speak about 30
different languages, so that would be too difficult and expensive to
arrange) and assessing their underlying learning strategies. It has been
quite successful, and the next phase is to collect more data and refine the
assessment process further.
I think it's one way forward, and I think the students have found it quite
helpful, too. Of course there are still issues about how we put support in
place once we have determined what is needed, but that is another battle to
be fought...
I'd love to hear about any other solutions that ESOL professionals have come
up with, and if anybody wants more details, do get in touch.
Anne Margaret
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