I read with interest Dominic's account of using City & Guilds as we have been using them for a few years now. I have the following comments
1) I agree on the difficulty of feeding corrective information back to City & Guilds.
2) We have EV visits yearly, not half-yearly.
3) It is beneficial for us to be able to do all the marking internally and to have undated assignments. However, we haven't yet assessed any candidates at L1 and L2. It looks like there is a huge amount of work involved for candidates and assessors for C&G at this level (National Literacy Test, 3 pieces of writing, 3 pieces of speaking evidence including a telephone call). Each individual piece of writing or speaking evidence needs to be assessed.
4) Judicious topic selection is essential. Some of the question/answer combinations are over-rigid (e.g. Q: Why did Mr Smith send you the letter? A: Because he is in charge of recruitment... 0 marks! Because I sent him an application form... 0 marks! To invite me for an interview on 2nd July at 3.30pm... 2 marks!). Also the exam structure for some topics ends in a convoluted imaginative journey which some candidates struggle with. E.g. plan a journey (but is has to be from Bristol to London), write and speak about how you planned the journey and what you did in London. Or choose a job in a hospital, write an application form, talk to a friend who happens to know about the job, have the interview, write a letter about the interview to a friend.
5) How did Esol Level 1 Reading morph into Literacy L1 Reading?
6) I think we will stick with C&G at Entry Levels for the time being but I'd like to investigate using a different body for L1 and L2. Any suggestions are welcome. If all Cambridge exams are marked externally, is it the same for Trinity? I like the look of the Cambridge past papers on their website.
Adrian Salmond
Education Co-ordinator
Therapy and Education (MSU)
John Howard Centre
12 Kenworthy Road
London
E9 5TD
tel. 020 8510 2468
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Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:01:59 +0100
From: Dominic McCabe <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: ESOL Accreditation
I have to agree with previous posters. The exams are version exams. Which means (unlike Cambridge for example) the same exams are used for years ( with slight revisions correcting some but not all errors) this suite exams have been in use since around 2004. There are nine different topics at entry level for the live assignments (silver screen, eat to be healthy, you and your phone, getting a job, driving, going on a journey, running a home, using the library, you and your health) and two practice topics (supermarkets and joining in). At each administration of the exams you cycle through the different topics but some students now have some familiarity with all the topics.
The exams are accessed online and printed off. A password is needed for the assessment sheets used by the tutors and the question papers but not for the audio files used to assess one part of the listening skills. This kind of sloppiness is typical of C&G. There is no effective way of feeding corrective information up to City and Guilds. One set of revisions was carried out about two years ago but because of the cut and paste manner in which the tutor assessment criteria are constructed many remain.
As an exam centre you are visited once every 6 (?) months by an external verifier but they only look at a sample of the students papers and your marking, they do not pass on your feedback on the validity, reliability and practicality of the assessment instruments themselves.
This is essentially a deal with the devil. Cambridge is the exam expert in EFL/ESL but they do all the marking and in the exams itself you invigilate or in the speaking and listening component you act as an interlocutor but the vast amount of the heavy lifting is done by them but the colleges must pay for it. Economically if not educationally, C&G make much better sense. Everyone turns a blind eye to the serious shortcomings (or the people with the power do) and teachers have to work very hard to make the exams work for the learners.
In one sense because of the amount of work we have to do the professionalism and management skills of the teachers come much more to the fore but no credit is given to us for this by local management in any college I have seen.
I would advise getting online as soon as you are able accessing the tests and when you choose a topic, read through the tests at the entry levels looking for poor test construction in the question papers and the assessment packs so that you are ready for the confusing errors and mistakes tutors and learners will encounter during the exam.
The level 1 and 2 tests are simpler in that the reading is, of course the awful mcq national literacy test and the other skills have less city and guilds input. What is more of a problem at this level is that the mark schemes are so unsupportive because of the broad nature of the criteria descriptors that you have to do an awful lot of the assessment work yourself and departmental co-ordination meetings for the assessors are very important here. In fact you'll find you meet a lot more about the exams at all levels than you did with Trinity.
Sorry for the long post.
Cheers Dominic
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