[sell]

Hi everyone!
on Monday I am going to conduct interviews with children for the groups. I have to check their level of English and so on. I know that I need to know what thay should know to be qualified to e.g. intermediate group but do you by any chance know some tricks how to check it very quickly? What should I remember about? What to avoid? I'm a teacher but this is my first situation and I'm a bit stressed. Thanks in advance.

[Eric18]

Good questions!

I have no experience with children, but with adults I look for verb tense confusion, vocabulary, and tempo in my first informal assessments of verbal skills.

While this may be impossible, you might look into videotaping the interviews so you can review them later so you can be both a full participant and full observer. Just a thought.

Good luck.

[sell]

thank you very much I think I'll manage somehow hihi
regarding recording...hmm it kind of impossible because I have to conduct the placement test, interview and give the results so I don't have time to watch it again :/

[DaveESL]

One important thing to do while giving a placement test is to use materials that reflect what students will actually be doing. So for an interview, I would try to take questions and themes from the books or other materials that the students will use in class. To test if they are at the intermediate level, ask them to read something from the intermediate textbook or ask them some questions from that book. When I did placement tests I would bring in books from each level and see which one fit the student best.