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
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