Level Assessment Guide

Silence or just "Yes" and "No" answers

When talking to an entry level student they will often be unable to answer your questions either because they have not grasped what you are asking them, or they don't have the language to answer back with.

Very basic grammar with familiar topics

When the student understands and is familiar with the topic, they will use very basic sentence structures. Very few conjunctions if any at all.

Self corrects a lot, hard to understand

When the student speaks, they may be unsure about how to form their sentences. This might cause them to stutter and repeat themselves, this can make it difficult to understand what they are trying to say.

Unable to express themselves

Even if a student has an opinion or detailed idea in mind, they are unable to form the sentences to express this. Only very basic ideas like if something is "Good" or "Bad" can be expressed.

Example Sentence

I like apple

Lots of short sentences, or longer sentences using basic conjunctions

When the student is talking they will use a collection of short sentences to express themselves. They may also make some longer sentences using basic conjunctions such as "And", "Or" and "But".

Able to express ideas or opinions with familiar topics

When the student is talking about something they are familiar with such as "Food", they are able to give opinions and ideas. These may not be fully realized but should be understandable.

Frequent grammatical errors

There are frequent grammatical errors when the student is speaking, for example missing articles and word ordering. Tenses will often be incorrectly used.

Awkward expressions

Because the student will make grammatical errors and often try to use filler phrases, they will often end up using awkward expressions that either don't fit what they were trying to express or sound strange because of a misused word.

Example Sentence

I like apples because it’s healthy so I ate every day. I didn’t like green apples. I only like red apples.

Beginning to form paragraphs and stories

The student is able to tell stories with more complex sentence structures. These stories will include a background, episodes, examples and a conclusion. This will be most apparent when the topic is familiar to the student.

Can state opinions and ideas using details, reasons and complex sentences

The student can use their language to express their ideas and opinions when asked about them. As well as expressing them they will be able to give reasons and details about why they feel that way using complex sentences.

Lots of filler phrases

The student has a good vocabulary of phrases, because of this they will often fall back on them in order to give themselves time to come up with more complex sentences. They may repeat the same phrase often as they have found it works in most situations.

Can use tenses, but sometimes makes mistakes

The student is able to use tenses effectively, however there will still be some mistakes in mixing tenses or using incorrect verb tenses.

Displays effort to talk about abstract matters

The student will be able to talk about abstract topics that they are not knowledgeable about. Even if they do not have the specific vocabulary needed for the topic they can use their available vocabulary to describe whatever they are talking about. The student might fall back on a simpler sentence structure as they are having to think about the topic much more.

Example Sentence

I like all fruit but apples are my absolute favorite. The crunchy ah, texture and sweet taste is wonderful. When I was young, my grandmother used to ah, send us a box of apples from Aomori ah, every fall. So ah, it was my good memory. That’s why I like apples.

Can talk about abstract matters with few problems

Even when the topic is unknown to the student they are able to speak freely about it using paragraphs and complex sentence structures. They will be able to express opinions and ideas as they come up with them.

Very few mistakes overall

Generally the student will not make many mistakes, the most common ones that you will hear will be tense ones but these should be rare.

Logical paragraphs

The student should be able to talk for long periods of time with little difficulty, they should be able to tell full stories with background, episodes, examples and a conclusion. They should also be able to give a fully reasoned argument.

Fluent flow to speech

When the student is speaking there should be few breaks in their speech, they should sounds similar to a native level speaker when talking about familiar topics with only abstract topics causing their speech to slow down a little.

Example Sentence

Apple has always been my favorite fruit since when I was very young. I remember my grandmother who used to own an apple orchard in Aomori would send us a box of Fuji apples every single fall. Fuji apple has a high sugar content and it’s very crisp. I love Fuji apple.