Language level survey

Language level surveys are processes that use pedagogically applicable methods to provide statements about the abilities of children and young people in uncontrolled acquired languages at a specific point in their educational biography. With bilingual and multilingual children, the so-called interlanguage or interim language is the focus of the investigations. Language skills assessment procedures are also being used increasingly among adult refugees .

Beginnings

The discussion on determining the language proficiency of children with German as a second language first came up in the 1970s, and in the course of the 1970s and 1980s the first systematic, scientific procedures, such as profile analysis (Clahsen 1985), were developed. However, only the language level of German was examined here. The children's mother tongue was mostly neglected and seldom included in the analysis, as it was not considered relevant. The overall scope of the term language level was discussed later. Due to a lack of scientific basis for second language acquisition research, the search for suitable survey instruments turned out to be a difficult undertaking. The authors of the procedures often criticized their methods themselves afterwards. Statistical studies and data collection by means of tests were considered inadequate in the 1980s and did not enjoy a high reputation. It was not until the end of the 1990s that the standstill in the development of tools for assessing language proficiency ended. With "Bärenstark", a Berlin method, a large-scale study of the language level of children at the time of school enrollment was carried out as part of the PISA study and its results. It has been found that reading skills have a decisive influence on school success. Children and young people with a migration background in particular showed considerable weaknesses in this area, and the discussion thus led to a new focus on diagnostics and support in the elementary sector. Almost all federal states followed the Berlin example, in which they adopted it or developed their own methods for language level diagnostics.

aims

A good third of those under five in Germany are children with a migration background, and according to the Federal Statistical Office , the number is growing steadily. Learning the German language happens uncontrolled in the first years of life, e.g. B. in kindergarten or on the playground. Not only through PISA do we know that these same children have more difficulties in the first years of school and the number of children with German as a second language in German secondary and special schools is disproportionately high. Since language competence has an impact on the school career and this in turn has an impact on later professional life, the reason for a systematic data collection is already given in preschool age. A distinction is generally made between allocation procedures and funding diagnostic procedures. The aim of the referral procedure is to find out whether the children or young people concerned have a need for language support. You have the right to produce results that are as detailed and clear as possible (e.g. speech therapy treatment or entitlement or obligation to attend an accompanying language course). The funding diagnostic procedures are used to determine the respective specific funding measures (e.g. vocabulary , pronunciation , grammar ). Funding diagnostic procedures should therefore justify funding-didactic decisions. It is therefore important that the language is raised in different dimensions. These include communication skills, current language skills, language acquisition strategies and the language situation .

Procedure

The procedure for assessing language proficiency can initially be divided into standardized and informal procedures. The standardized procedures are based on an age norm that allows the individual linguistic performance to be assessed and classified in a ranking. The standardized procedures can only be used to a limited extent for multilingual children. With the help of these procedures, it is possible to determine which multilingual students do not have the language level in the second language that corresponds to the level of monolingual German students of the same age. These procedures only give a first impression of the language level of a child or adolescent. Informal procedures and other observations must be used to obtain a more precise overview of language proficiency. In contrast to the formal procedures, the informal procedures do not aim at the assessment and classification in a hierarchy, but serve to record individual requirements and achievements, from which support measures can be taken later if necessary .

As can be seen from Volume 11 of the educational reform of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research , four types of procedures can be distinguished: estimation procedures, observation procedures, profile analyzes and tests. In the following, the four types of processes are presented and explained using the best-known examples of processes carried out in Germany.

Estimation procedure

Estimation processes can be described as evaluating language skills based on personal impressions using given scales. These procedures enable language proficiency to be ascertained both on the basis of external assessments by parents or other people in the immediate vicinity of the child and on the basis of the child's self-assessments. Estimation methods are used in the form of standardized surveys, especially with small children, as there are relatively few test methods for them. They are comparatively time-saving, but pose two risks. On the one hand, the meaning of the scale values remains vague and, on the other hand, the assignment of speech perception to the scale values is based on subjective judgments. Concreteness and differentiation of the specifications and the combination of self and external assessments are possible strategies for reducing these dangers.

ELFRA-1 / -2

ELFRA-1 and ELFRA-2 are the parent questionnaires for one year old children and the parent questionnaire for two year old children. The procedures were initiated in 2000 by Dr. Hildegard Doil and Hannelore Grimm worked out. This is an estimation procedure for the survey of language proficiency using the external assessment of the children by one of the parents, usually the mother. The ELFRA-1 is made up of four development scales: speech understanding , speech production , gestures and fine motor skills . The speech production scale takes into account non-linguistic and early speech sounds, imitation performances and rhythmic-prosodic features. The receptive vocabulary as well as semantically adequate reactions to short verbalized requests are recorded with the help of the language comprehension development scale. The gesture scale acts as a bridge from pre-linguistic to linguistic development and the developmental neurological functions are documented by the fine motor skills scale. After completing the parent questionnaire, taking into account the given criteria, the child's level of linguistic development is assessed.

The ELFRA-2 questionnaire contains a vocabulary scale with which the productive vocabulary is measured, as well as a development scale syntax and a development scale morphology according to the developmental tasks of the second year of life.

Observation procedure

In observation procedures, the language level of a child is determined by observing and describing his or her actions in everyday or posed action situations. These procedures are based on an observation sheet with instructions for systematic and differentiated observation. Observation methods are mainly used in the elementary area, as part of development observations . In contrast to the estimation method, the observation method primarily describes linguistic behavior from a pedagogical point of view, and there is no evaluation.

SISMIC

The procedure for language behavior and interest in language among immigrant children in kindergarten facilities, SISMIK for short, was developed in 2003 by Michaela Ulich and Toni Mayr from the State Institute for Early Education in Munich . This observation method, which is intended directly for use by educational professionals, should not only contribute to the assessment of language proficiency, but also to determine the language support measures. The SISMIK observation sheet, which is suitable for children between the ages of around three and a half to six years, is used to assess both language proficiency and motivation to learn the language and the learning process . The procedure enables targeted observation and documentation of the language development of migrant children, on the basis of which appropriate language support measures can be implemented.

Profile analysis

Initially, profile analyzes were used in speech therapy (Clahsen 1996) and then found their way into second language didactics. Profile analyzes, like observations, are particularly focused on a child's linguistic qualifications and can reveal significant strengths and weaknesses. By analyzing quasi-natural speaking / writing samples, a linguistic competence profile is created, whereby various linguistic partial qualifications are indicated by indicators - such as B. Form or position of the verb - are recorded. Contrary to the procedure for observations, a profile analysis is based on an audio recording of the action situations, which has to be evaluated in a complex manner. The higher expenditure of time, however, allows more differentiated statements and, if necessary, individual deepening.

HAVAS 5

The Hamburg method for analyzing the language proficiency of five-year-olds is a profile analysis method that was published in 2003 by Hans Reich and Hans-Joachim Roth on behalf of the Education and Sports Authority and relates to a child's linguistic competence. The aim of the procedure is to individually record the language development level of a child in the last year of kindergarten or in preschool. The HAVAS 5 consists of a speech impulse - a picture story, evaluation sheets for the languages German, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, language-specific evaluation manuals including glossaries . Besides the measurement of productive skills in English and the home language context information collected for the family language practice via a separate questionnaire.

The basis for this is a six-part picture story with a clear beginning and a clear end. Each of the pictures shows a cat and a bird in interaction. In an individual situation, this picture story is presented to a child as an impulse by the examining person (e.g. teacher / educator). With the words "What is happening there?" The child is offered entry. Furthermore, the interviewee should be very restrained and only speak in exceptional cases, as the flow of speech in children starts at different speeds. The conversation is recorded with a recording device. The recording is then transcribed and then evaluated with the help of an evaluation sheet. Particular attention is paid to the position and forms of the verbs in the sentence, the number of verbs and the sentence links (vocabulary, morphology and syntax ). However, coping with the narrative task and coping with the conversation situation are also included in the survey. A language profile of the child is created from the results.

Testing

Tests are theory-based queries about language skills or individual components of the language systems that are standardized or at least can be standardized and strive for a high degree of objectivity. In preschool and school, tests are used specifically for the purpose of an initial determination of language support needs ( screening ). They are used to ascertain individual linguistic partial qualifications. The survey takes place in the context of strongly controlled action situations, whereby the communicative actions of the children are mostly controlled or restricted. However, these controlled situations also offer the possibility of comparing the test results. The problem with tests is the inferring performance in partial qualifications on the overall performance, as these must be based on corresponding theories that allow such conclusions. But that's not always the case. Whether or to what extent they are suitable for appropriately recording uncontrolled acquired language, especially in the context of bilingual and multilingualism, is a matter of dispute.

Strong as a bear

Bärenstark was developed in Berlin in the 1990s and was the first official tool for assessing language proficiency, which served as the basis for developing other methods. It was used with children in the school entry phase and examined the language level and the need for language support both in children with a migration background and in monolingual German children. Context information on family language practice is also collected in addition to the test implementation. Since the procedure was designed as a test, the tasks for the individual areas were standardized and the results were incorporated into a point value system.

The place where Bärenstark took place in Berlin was the respective elementary school and mostly the teachers carried out the test. In the approx. 30-minute process, the child is introduced to a teddy bear, which acts as a figure of trust. This teddy bear is placed in the room and the child should say where the bear is. For this purpose, the child is presented with a series of pictures on which animals can also be seen. What the child speaks is recorded word for word. Only the skills in the German language are assessed and the focus of the investigation is on grammar and vocabulary. The tasks include the naming of body parts (active and passive), descriptions of actions that are evaluated according to morphological and syntactic aspects, the naming of differences and prepositional groups with local meaning. The growing criticism of this method related on the one hand to the language understanding based on adult grammar and on the other hand to the evaluation in the point value system. In the case of bilingual or multilingual children, the first language was not included in the evaluation.

Further procedures in the area of language level assessment

LiSe-DaZ
Cito language test
Bavarian screening
Tulip bed
SETK 3-5
SFD test procedure
Fit in German
HARE
boomerang
German plus
Level descriptions DaZ

Web links

Wiktionary: Language level survey - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Ludwigsburg University of Education, Junk-Deppenmeier (PDF; 132 kB)
Ludwig Maximilians University Munich ELFRA 1 (PDF; 881 kB)
State Institute for Early Education

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Hans-H. Reich: language level surveys, monolingual and multilingual . In: Bernt Ahrenholz and Ingelore Oomen-Welke (eds.): German as a second language . Baltmannsweiler. Hohengehren: Schneider-Verlag, 2008, pp. 420-429.
↑ Kniffka, Gabriele; Siebert- Ott, Gesa (2007): Second language acquisition research - an overview. In: Kniffka, Gabriele; Siebert-Ott, Gesa: German as a second language - teaching and learning: Paderborn. UTB Schöningh. Pp. 25-69.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Hans-Joachim Roth: Procedure for determining the language proficiency - a critical overview . In: Christiane Bainski (ed.); Marianne Krüger-Potratz (Ed.): Handbook Language Promotion. Essen: Neue Deutsche Schule Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2007, pp. 22–41.
↑ Alexandra Junk-Deppenmeier, "Language level surveys among pupils with German as a second language at secondary level as a basis for individual support (PDF; 132 kB). Website of the Ludwigsburg University of Education. Accessed on March 8, 2012.
↑ Konrad Ehlich: Language acquisition and its determination in children with and without a migration background: What you know, what you need, what you can expect . In: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Public Relations Department (Hrsg.): Bildungsforschung Volume 11. Requirements for procedures for regular language assessment as a basis for the early and individual support of children with and without a migration background. Bonn, Berlin 2007, pp. 11-64.
↑ Monika Elisabeth Saracino, "Prognostic validity of the parent questionnaire for one-year-old children (ELFRA-1) in the early detection of circumscribed language development disorders" (PDF; 881 kB). Website of the University of Munich. Retrieved March 6, 2012.

[Reich-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Hans-H. Reich: language level surveys, monolingual and multilingual . In: Bernt Ahrenholz and Ingelore Oomen-Welke (eds.): German as a second language . Baltmannsweiler. Hohengehren: Schneider-Verlag, 2008, pp. 420-429.

[Kniffka-2] Kniffka, Gabriele; Siebert- Ott, Gesa (2007): Second language acquisition research - an overview. In: Kniffka, Gabriele; Siebert-Ott, Gesa: German as a second language - teaching and learning: Paderborn. UTB Schöningh. Pp. 25-69.

[Roth-3] Hans-Joachim Roth: Procedure for determining the language proficiency - a critical overview . In: Christiane Bainski (ed.); Marianne Krüger-Potratz (Ed.): Handbook Language Promotion. Essen: Neue Deutsche Schule Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2007, pp. 22–41.

[Deppenmeier-4] Alexandra Junk-Deppenmeier, "Language level surveys among pupils with German as a second language at secondary level as a basis for individual support (PDF; 132 kB). Website of the Ludwigsburg University of Education. Accessed on March 8, 2012.

[Band11-5] Konrad Ehlich: Language acquisition and its determination in children with and without a migration background: What you know, what you need, what you can expect . In: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Public Relations Department (Hrsg.): Bildungsforschung Volume 11. Requirements for procedures for regular language assessment as a basis for the early and individual support of children with and without a migration background. Bonn, Berlin 2007, pp. 11-64.

[elfra-6] Monika Elisabeth Saracino, "Prognostic validity of the parent questionnaire for one-year-old children (ELFRA-1) in the early detection of circumscribed language development disorders" (PDF; 881 kB). Website of the University of Munich. Retrieved March 6, 2012.