I recently got a very polite email from a gentleman in Korea who is running a school program and is using my Boost! Integrated Skills Series. He wanted to know if I could help him with speaking and listening placement tests for the series, given there are already excellent placement tests for the reading, writing and grammar strands of the series (available for free download in the teacher resource center of the main Boost! site).
Unfortunately, the folks at Pearson Asia ELT have never gotten back to me about making placement tests for the speaking and writing strands (a-hem, despite numerous reminders!), quite possibly because there hasn't been any real demand for them from the marketplace. The impetus for professional reading and writing placement tests for the series actually came about when schools in the United States started using these strands (not just for ESL students but for remedial work with native speakers, believe it or not! ~ appears to be one of the first instances where a textbook series made for EFL contexts was adopted for an ESL context and for remedial purposes, as opposed to vice-versa), and they demanded appropriately accurate and professional placement tests. Given that Boost! Speaking and Listening haven't been adopted (yet) in the United States, it probably accounts for why I haven't been asked to produce placement tests for these particular strands.
But I do have some alternative suggestions for creating quick placement tests for speaking and listening based on existing reading and writing materials. I'm writing about them here on the blog in the hope it gets found by other Boost! series users looking for similar ideas. Even if you're not using Boost!, you may get some useful ideas out of this for creating quick speaking and listening placement tests for other series you are using.
(If you figure this post is just a shameless plug for my coursebook series, I would like to tell you (1) you're probably partially right, and (2) no-one's forcing you to read this post - "it's my blog and I'll post what I want to, post what I want to" - nothing for you to see here, move along, please...)
Making a (Boost!) Speaking Placement Test
First of all, let me point out that speaking placement tests are notoriously hard to make well, and are rarely reliable given teachers have very little time to check each student 1-1 without rushing or avoiding distractions from other students in busy school settings.
One very quick way you could produce a placement test, however, is by using one or more of the Boost! review units from the main speaking coursebook, which are designed to check things like pronunciation, ability to contribute to an ongoing dialogue, and ability to create short speeches of a more topical nature. These could be taken from levels 2 and 3 (as it is a 4-level series, and for placement content I always aim for the middle levels and see how well the learners appear to be able to handle them). Very simple to generate, and a pretty good indication of general ability across the four levels, but - as I mentioned earlier - it's going to be time-consuming to apply to a lot of students 1-1.
An alternative suggestion, and one I've used often in the past, is to use the student's written work as the basic material for the speaking placement test. The placement test for Boost! Writing is quite reliable and manageable to apply with any number of students. This indication of writing level (across a range of levels 1-4) will be a useful starting point, because it reflects the student's productive ability. Let's say the writing test indicates level 2. We can then chat about the same material in the writing test with the student and get some idea about how much above or below their indicated writing ability their speaking capacity appears to be. This is a simple matter of asking the students to read some of their own text out loud, asking them to talk for 1-2 minutes in response to the main essay topic (allowing them to recall but not look directly at what they wrote on paper earlier), then following up with some general questions that check the topic in more detail and expand it in new directions more personal to the student. Some students will be more fluent in expressing their ideas than their writing indicates, while others will not (and some may be right at about the same level).
Some test writers and assessment experts out there will no doubt be cringing at this advice, but I've used this method and it's been very reliable. In addition, it has been very easy to apply with a minimum of fussing around - which makes it feasible in busy settings with a lot of students to place.
Making a (Boost!) Listening Placement Test
The advice for the listening test is fairly similar to the advice given above about speaking. The first simple idea is to use a range of review units from levels 2-3 of the main Boost! Listening coursebook (remember there are 6 complete review units in each book, so there's plenty to choose from and it's not like you're going to end up pre-using too much of your review materials), or even the supplementary listening materials in the free teacher resource section (there's a worksheet and range of sound files for every coursebook unit). These review materials are particularly useful because they incorporate a variety of the skill foci used in not just the previous unit but all of the previous units in that particular book. They also feature sound, word and phrase level comprehension in addition to the main skill comprehension questions. Again, it's a simple matter of checking how well the learners handle this mid-level material to help you decide whether they are below, above or pretty much at the level represented by the review or supplementary materials.
Alternatively (though I must say I prefer the former option in this case, because of the sheer volume of extra review material and listening files available for applications like these), you could use the learner's reading placement test (for the Boost! Reading strand) - a good reliable measure of the student's level - as a starting point, and then use a couple of the supplementary listening materials to check how closely their listening level appears to correlate with the indicated reading level.
Admittedly, these are not perfect solutions for determining speaking and listening levels of students coming into your program (though bear in mind, are there actually any really perfect solutions when it comes to testing in general?), but they are practical, hit reasonably close to the mark, and can be applied without too much extra time for preparation and application.
:-)
