English Skills Assessment
Language Skills Assessment
The tests are all taken on the computer and are computer-adaptive (see below). All students take the same Listening test first and most then take the Reading Comprehension test. Those students who exhibit weak listening skills are routed to an ESL (English as a second language) Reading test. Weak listening skills usually indicate that the student still needs help in ESL and therefore should be given a reading test designed for ESL students that will more accurately assess their level of development.
What is a computer-adaptive test?
In all cases, the tests are computer-adaptive; therefore, the test items that students are presented with depend on how they answered the previous one, with correct answers leading to more difficult items and wrong answers to easier ones. Students, therefore, leave the test room usually feeling that they were able to answer most of the questions. What is the Listening test like?
The Listening test includes literal comprehension and implied meaning. The conversations that students listen to take place in academic environments such as lecture halls, study sessions, a computer lab, the library, the gymnasium, and so forth; and in everyday environments such as home, at a store, in a restaurant, at a dentist’s office, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, and performing tasks at work.
What are the Reading tests like?
In the Reading Comprehension test, content areas are identifying main ideas, direct statements/secondary ideas, inferences, applications, and sentence relationships. These areas are embedded in a range of categories of knowledge that include social sciences, natural and physical sciences, human relations, practical affairs, and the arts.
The less challenging ESL Reading test assesses comprehension of short passages and some inferential skills such as main idea, fact versus opinion, cause and effect logic, identifying irrelevant information, and author’s point of
view.
The tests are all taken on the computer and are computer-adaptive (see below). All students take the same Listening test first and most then take the Reading Comprehension test. Those students who exhibit weak listening skills are routed to an ESL (English as a second language) Reading test. Weak listening skills usually indicate that the student still needs help in ESL and therefore should be given a reading test designed for ESL students that will more accurately assess their level of development.
What is a computer-adaptive test?
In all cases, the tests are computer-adaptive; therefore, the test items that students are presented with depend on how they answered the previous one, with correct answers leading to more difficult items and wrong answers to easier ones. Students, therefore, leave the test room usually feeling that they were able to answer most of the questions. What is the Listening test like?
The Listening test includes literal comprehension and implied meaning. The conversations that students listen to take place in academic environments such as lecture halls, study sessions, a computer lab, the library, the gymnasium, and so forth; and in everyday environments such as home, at a store, in a restaurant, at a dentist’s office, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, and performing tasks at work.
What are the Reading tests like?
In the Reading Comprehension test, content areas are identifying main ideas, direct statements/secondary ideas, inferences, applications, and sentence relationships. These areas are embedded in a range of categories of knowledge that include social sciences, natural and physical sciences, human relations, practical affairs, and the arts.
The less challenging ESL Reading test assesses comprehension of short passages and some inferential skills such as main idea, fact versus opinion, cause and effect logic, identifying irrelevant information, and author’s point of
view.