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I tried to complete the survey, since my colleagues and I have serious reservations about the national literacy exam, whether for ESOL or native speaker students, but it froze and then vanished at somewhere around 80% complete. Among the reservations are: exam results don't necessarily reflect our observations or assessments of students' real life reading skills; there is no productive language component, whereas employers complain most about spoken and written English; there is no allowance (extra time, dictionaries) for non-native speakers, including those who are less familiar with the roman alphabet, and the fact that too much of our limited class time has to be spent teaching candidates exam skills rather than language skills. I'll try again today, but it's going to be something of an nuisance to have to type in all those reasons again. Cheryl Thornett ESOL & Literacy tutor Birmingham Adult Education ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Simpson" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2009 2:50 PM Subject: Evaluation of S4L qualifications Hello all Buried deep in the Tribal Group website, a survey as part of an evaluation of QCA Skills for Life literacy, numeracy and ICT qualifications. Follow the link at: http://www.tribalgroup.co.uk/index.php?ob=1&id=82 This isn't an evaluation of the ESOL quals but given the large number of multilingual and ESOL students who take these other exams, it seems of huge relevance to ESOL. I'm thinking in particular about the Level 1 and 2 literacy test. I don't know the deadline for this, I'm afraid, but have been told it's soon. Cheers James *********************************** ESOL-Research is a forum for researchers and practitioners with an interest in research into teaching and learning ESOL. ESOL-Research is managed by James Simpson at the Centre for Language Education Research, School of Education, University of Leeds. To join or leave ESOL-Research, visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html A quick guide to using Jiscmail lists can be found at: http://jiscmail.ac.uk/help/using/quickuser.htm To contact the list owner, send an email to [log in to unmask]