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Placement test
Teacher’s guideThis placement test is designed to help teachers decide at which level of English Unlimited new students should be placed.
The test contains:• 120writtenmultiple-choicequestions,20ateachlevelfromStartertoAdvanced(coveringCEFlevelsA1to
C1).ThequestionsfocusonthelanguagetaughtacrossthesixlevelsofEnglish Unlimited.
• anoralplacementtest,designedtobeusedinconjunctionwiththewrittentest.Thequestionsinthistestare linked to the goals in the English Unlimitedcoursebooks,whichinturnarebasedontheCEF‘can-do’statements.Theoraltestisdesignedtobeflexible.Thisshouldallowteacherstogetanoverviewofstudents’speakingabilityinorderto‘fine-tune’theirassessmentofthecorrectlevelatwhichtoplacestudents.
• keysandtablesforinterpretingscores.
Written test procedure1 Askthestudenttostartatthebeginningofthewrittentestandstopwhenthequestionsbecometoodifficult.
Allow30–40minutesforthetest.
2 MarkthetestandusethetablebelowtoplacethestudentprovisionallyatoneofthesixlevelsofEnglish Unlimited.
3 Usetheoralplacementtesttoconfirmoradjustthisplacement(seeOraltestprocedurebelow).
Starter Elementary Pre-intermediate
Intermediate Upper Intermediate
Advanced
Written test score
0–15 16–35 36–55 56–75 76–95 96+
1 Placement test Teacher’s guide Photocopiable © Cambridge University Press 2010
Oral test procedure1 Checkthestudent’swrittentestscoreandprovisionalplacement.
2 Askthestudenttheintroductoryquestionsandnotetheinformationonthescoresheet.
3 Askaminimumoffourquestionsfromthequestionbankthatcorrespondstotheleveloftheprovisionalplacement.
4 Encouragethestudenttogivefullanswers,bymeansofpromptsratherthandirectquestions.Allow5–10minutesperquestion,dependingonlevel.
5 Awardascoreforeachquestion,usingthebanddescriptorsbelow,interpreted at the relevant level.
Band descriptors Score
Insufficientsampleofspokenlanguage.Studentfailstounderstandquestion,evenwhenrepeated.
0
Evidenceofunderstandingatabasiclevel,butfrequentinaccuraciesingrammarandvocabularymayobscurethemessage.Significanthesitationandinaccuraciesinpronunciationimpedeunderstanding.Utterancesleftunextended.
1
Clearevidenceofcomprehension.Grammarandvocabularysufficienttoconveyintendedmeaningandextendanswerseffectively.Utterancesarereasonablyrelevantandcoherentwithonlyoccasionalhesitation.However,complexvocabularyandgrammaticalstructuresareavoided(exceptinobviouslywell-rehearsedutterances).
2
Questionsfullyunderstood.Accurateandappropriateuseofarangeofsimpleandcomplexgrammaticalformsandvocabularytodevelopresponsesfully.Utterancesintelligibleandlinked coherently and logically without undue hesitation.
3
6 Placethestudentasfollows:
Oral score Level
Mainly1s Onelevelbelow written score
Mainly2s Atsame level as written score
Mainly3s Onelevelabove written score
7 Wherethereisasignificantdiscrepancybetweenthestudent’swrittenscoreandoralperformance,teachersshouldusetheirprofessionaljudgementtoplacethestudentatthecorrectlevel.
8 TeachersmayliketoaskstudentsfortheirownassessmentoftheirlevelofEnglish,bearinginmind,however,thatthisjudgementislikelytobeverysubjective.
2 Placement test Teacher’s guide Photocopiable © Cambridge University Press 2010