Description

This edition of NALDIC Quarterly focuses on assessment and I must begin with an apology for the delay in bringing it to print. I began writing my editorial just as this year’s summer GCSE results arrived. Achievement in GCSE English fell for the first time in recent years and outrage followed the news that the grade boundaries had been unfairly moved upwards after the January exams by as much as ten marks, making 53 the score for achieving a C grade rather than 43. This is the first assessment in a student’s school career which is recognised by employers when judging a candidate’s ability to use English in their workplace; a C grade in English is often the minimum requirement which allows students to progress into post 16 academic studies; 5A* to C grades, including English and Maths, is the benchmark for the government’s league tables so, understandably, many schools and local authorities are still demanding an enquiry and/or re-grading almost two months later.

Contents

Editorial (page 2)
Dianne Excell

View from the Chair (page 3)
Amy Thompson

Policy, Practice and Research – EAL Assessment Practices in Secondary Schools (page 4)
Catharine Driver

Assessing Proficiency in a Pupil’s First Language (page 7)
Angelika Baxter

Assessing Bilingual Learners: A Beginners’ Guide (page 12)
Judith Longstreth

Classroom Discourse and Teachers’ Formative Assessment in Content and Language Integrated Classrooms (CLIL) in Madrid (page 17)
Irene Pascual Peña

Exam Facts (page 23)
Nicola Davies

A Summer of Mis-assessment? EAL Pupils Caught in the Squeeze (page 29)
Constant Leung and Manny Vazquez

NALDIC News (page 31)

Conference Reviews (page 39)

Book Reviews (page 40)
Catharine Driver and Frank Monaghan