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HTLAL - Self Assessment Test | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 22 27 November 2012 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do you think it's possible we could construct a language self assessment test for this forum for various languages ? The idea would be to assist members in determining their language level. While the language profile asks general questions about ability, I was thinking of something specific for each language, including typical grammar and vocabulary at each level. I know when I first came to the forum I'd overestimated my ability in some languages, as I didn't have a reference point for beginner, intermediate, basic fluency and advanced.
What are you thoughts ? Edited by DaraghM on 27 November 2012 at 3:03pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 2 of 22 27 November 2012 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think we probably have the skills here and it's an interesting idea.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 3 of 22 27 November 2012 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
That's a lot of different grammars and vocabulary for each language. How would it be differentiated from the loads of tests already out there on the web guesstimating CEFR levels? It seems like a whole lot of work for something that most people will probably ignore in favor of whatever other multiple choice test out there gives the highest score. R. == 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 22 27 November 2012 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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For a general test, the old self assessment checklist from the Council of Europe is actually pretty good. Even if you answer a bit optimistically, it corresponds pretty well to what's required by the CEFRL exams.
I think the problem with a language-specific test is that it gets very hard to test people once they reach a strong B1. They already know most of the grammar and they can bluff their way through most reading comprehension even if their comprehension isn't 100%. You could probably build a pretty good listening comprehension test for the B1 to C1 range, I suppose. And oral skills really require a trained examiner. There's a reason why most CEFRL exams end up costing a couple hundred bucks. (And wasn't it sfuqua who mentioned that FSI language exams can be a real battlefield, trying to cut through students' clever coping measures?) Accurate assessment of language skills takes good exams and trained examiners, and even then, it's still somewhat inexact. 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 22 27 November 2012 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Agreed. Also, I don't think there's a right (or wrong) list of the grammar topics for each level. Obviously the present tense is A1 and the subjunctive is one of the last "big" topics to master, but in between it's all pretty arbitrary. Most lists like that would be based on coursebooks, but it all depends on how much there is to learn. An objective list for Finnish would cover most of the grammar by B1, whereas in a multi-part coursebook it would be distributed more evenly between the levels.
Besides, although for example knowing the present tense is an obvious must for A1, I wouldn't exclude anyone from B2 on the sole criterion of not using the 3rd person -s in English. It's just not that simple, otherwise there would be no need for the detailed "can do" lists. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 22 28 November 2012 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that self-estimating CEFR levels, while obviously imperfect, is good enough for the purposes of the forum. Assessing language competence by machine is really quite difficult.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 7 of 22 28 November 2012 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't come across particularly good machine assessment apart from AVE (Aula Virtual de Español). For the HTLAL test, I'd imagine a simple series of bi-directional translation exercises. The test wouldn't be interactive, and would rely on the person making an honest assessment of their capabilities. The idea would be to provide some guidance where a lot of ambiguity exists. The test could include some grammar exercises and vocabulary recognition. Given the wealth of material for French, Spanish, and German, it's relatively easy to derive a basic test, but imagine if we could work on something similar for all the languages studied here!
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 22 28 November 2012 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the term self-assessment test is a bit of an oxymoron, but I see the general idea. I'm not sure that it would be worth the effort when it seems, as @garyb put it, the CEFR model could do the job for our purposes here.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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