, 5 minutes to read
Schools use the word “test” for four different things. Each answers a different question, and a test built for one question answers the others badly. Knowing which is which saves money and arguments.
Four tests, four questions
| Kind of test | The question it answers | When | Who uses the result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Placement | Which of our groups should this person join? | Before the course | The school’s office |
| Diagnostic | What exactly can and can’t this learner do? | At the start of the course | The teacher |
| Progress or achievement | Have they learnt what we taught? | During and at the end | Teacher and learner |
| Proficiency exam | Can this person prove their level to someone else? | Whenever a certificate is needed | Universities, employers, authorities |
Placement: quick, broad, good enough to decide
A placement test has to cover the whole scale, because you do not know in advance whether a beginner or an advanced speaker is sitting it. It has to be short, because it happens before the person is your student and nothing obliges them to finish. And it needs only enough precision to choose between the groups you actually run. Its result is a decision, not a document.
Diagnostic: narrow and detailed
A diagnostic test starts where placement ends. The level is known; the teacher wants a map of strengths and gaps inside it, such as whether the group controls past tenses or avoids them. It can be long, because it is done in class time, and its questions are chosen to cover a syllabus rather than a scale.
Progress and achievement: tied to the course
These tests ask about what was taught. A high mark means the course did its job; it does not, by itself, mean the learner has moved up a level. Schools that report “level reached” from an end-of-course test are answering a question the test did not ask.
Proficiency exams: slow, secure, recognised
An exam that universities and employers accept has to be supervised, protected against copying, and consistent from year to year. That makes it expensive and slow, and rightly so. It also tests speaking and writing, marked by trained examiners. None of this is needed to choose between Tuesday’s group and Thursday’s.
Common mix-ups
Using an old exam paper for placement
An exam paper targets one level. It can tell you whether someone is at B2; it cannot tell you where a candidate who fails it stands. A beginner and an intermediate student may both score badly, for different reasons.
Treating a placement result as a certificate
A placement test taken at home, unsupervised, in twenty minutes, is the right tool for forming groups and the wrong one for a visa file. A responsible provider says so; we do, in our terms.
Expecting placement to diagnose
A placement test asks too few questions on any one point of grammar to say what a learner needs to work on. That is the teacher’s first week.
Measuring progress with a different instrument each time
If you want to show that a learner has moved, measure before and after on the same scale. A placement test that reports a score inside each level, and not only the level, can show movement that a bare label hides.
Choosing a placement test
For the placement decision alone, look for:
- the whole scale in one test, so that nobody has to guess which paper to hand out;
- a length candidates will finish, on the device they have with them;
- a result on the scale your courses use, with enough detail to split parallel groups;
- an honest margin;
- every language you teach.
That is the brief NGPT was built to. The method is described under How it works, and a working process for the office in How to place new language students.