Cambridge English Unlimited Placement Test (Teacher's Guide)

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