Some Reasons to Give Diagnotic Tests to Beginners

Diagnostic tests are usually meant to provide teachers with insight into the learners’ level of

proficiency. With this information, teachers can decide on the adjustments needed to level

learners from the start.

But, how do we go about assessing students who have had no systematic contact with

English? If they haven’t been taught, we cannot assess what they have learned. So why a

Diagnostic test for the Starter level?

Now more than ever, regardless of where we live or what our mother tongue is, we are

surrounded by English. In fields like technology, management and marketing, most world

languages borrow specific jargon from English. Many of these borrowed words become part

of our everyday talk. Besides, it is quite easy to turn on the radio or television and receive

English input. Young people also listen to songs in English, go online and use chatrooms:

these are some of the ways in which students have already been in contact with English

when they start studying it formally.

And this is where this diagnostic test comes in. Students are expected to do this test with no

teacher intervention (this is why instructions are given in Spanish). Its exercises are designed to raise awareness of the knowledge they already have and of the reading skills they can use to expand this knowledge or overcome comprehension gaps.

Calendars are designed in similar ways around the world. This helps us use the physical form as a support for inferring meaning from context.

Students will need to use their observation and decode the format to do Exercise 1.

Observation proves to be of paramount importance. Students might know the name of some

months, but they will be able to check their order and the first three letters of their names in

the calendar provided. This will enable them to do Exercise 1.a.

For Exercise 1.b, holidays are listed on the top right corner. The use of the learners’ previous

knowledge of celebrations in Argentina will enable them to associate English and Spanish

equivalents. Adolescents will surely know the meaning of some of the lexical items, and

this knowledge will lead them to the discovery of some new ones. Talking about the skills

and knowledge they have put to use will be empowering and will build confidence for the

language learning process.

In Exercise 1.c, students are asked to order letters to form the days of the week. As the

first three letters are provided in the calendar and all the words end in “day”, it will not be

too difficult for learners to work out the correct spellings. If they observe the calendar and

associate days with the ending of their names (“day”), they will only have to put a few letters

in order. They will be discovering the correct spelling.

Exercise 2 asks students to identify words our language has borrowed from English and they

quite often use. This will help learners become aware of how much vocabulary in English

they have already incorporated.

In Exercise 4 students are expected to match words and numbers. Most people know how

to count orally in English, but they have not necessarily seen those numbers in writing. This

activity will help learners become aware of the lack of grapheme-phoneme correspondence

in English.

Exercises 5 and 6 present students with known and unknown items they have to match with

their Spanish equivalent (Ex. 5) or graphic representation (Ex. 6). This enhances their risktaking

resolution of the linguistic problems.

When teachers give assessed tests back, both teachers and students will be able to reflect

upon many aspects of the teaching/learning process which the classroom community will

construct cooperatively:

• Shared feelings and expectations

• Attitudes towards learning

• Skills to be developed

• Strategies which will enhance learning

If teachers profit from this pooling of feelings, knowledge and resources, a really enjoyable

teaching/ learning adventure will have started.