topic, spoken in a way that is suitable for beginners (i.e. slowly and with clear articulation). The speech does not contain unexpected elements or unpredictable information (that is, information which does not match the expectations built up by the context or by the initial information provided). The language is made up mainly of single-clause sentences and the range of vocabulary is generally limited to words or phrases which students have contain unexpected elements or unpredictable information (that is, information which does not match the expectations built up by the context or by the initial information provided). The language is made up mainly of simple sentences (e.g. one or two clauses) and the range of vocabulary is generally limited to words of phrases which students have already encountered. When reading aloud, learners’ pronunciations of words may be influenced by English correspondences, but they are sound
already encountered. beginning to try to overcome this. Level 2 Learners can access main arguments and details of short texts (e.g. about six or seven utterances), spoken considerably more slowly than normal. The speech does not include unexpected information but does include a limited amount of language which they have not yet encountered, and they will therefore have to infer meanings from the context. The language Level 2 Learners can access main arguments and details of short texts (e.g. about 50 words). Texts do not include unexpected information, but do include a limited amount of language which they have not yet encountered, requiring them to infer meanings from the context. The language includes a greater range of vocabulary and structures and is drawn from several topics they have encountered, including those covered in previous terms or years of study. When reading aloud, learners are
includes a greater range of vocabulary and structures, including utterances containing more than one clause. The language is drawn from several topics they have encountered. beginning to pronounce words in a way which is recognizable to a sympathetic native speaker, although the pronunciations of many words may still be influenced by L1 correspondences. Level 3 Learners can access main arguments and details of longer (e.g. about forty five seconds in length), spoken more slowly and clearly than normal. The speech generally contains few unpredictable elements, but does contain Level 3 Learners can access main arguments and details of longer texts (e.g. about 100 words). Texts may contain some unpredictable elements. Learners’ reading is characterized by either (a) increased fluency when handling texts which contain a large amount of familiar language;
4 Learners can access main arguments and details of extended texts (e.g. about one minute in length) which contain unpredictable elements and a range of language which they have not previously encountered, requiring them to infer from the surrounding language and context. The speech is characterized by either greater speed (i.e. approaching native-like speed) or greater complexity in Level 4 Learners can access main arguments and details of extended texts (e.g. 100-150 words) which contain unpredictable elements and a range of language which they have not previously encountered, requiring them to infer from the surrounding language and context. Texts show greater complexity in terms of vocabulary, structures and idiom (i.e. having some characteristics of authentic language). When reading aloud, students pronounce almost all words in such a way that they
Grammaticality Judgement Task Strategic behaviour Development in strategic behaviour measured by self-report (e.g. checklists) and teacher observation. Progression characterized by increasing engagement with text and decreasing reliance on others / teacher; increasing use of multiple sources for engagement with a text and understanding of when and how to use particular strategies for learning. Glossary Articulation Rate refers in this case to the number of units (e.g. syllables) produced per time unit (e.g. per second). This is different to the more global measure of words per minute, which would include pauses. In other words, a student could be slow at reading aloud either because you articulate syllables very slowly, or because you articulate fast but leave very long pauses. Content words are words that have meaning rather than a structural function. Nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs are usually content words. E.g. a little cat sat peacefully on the mat and snoozed – ‘little’, ‘cat’, ‘sat’, ‘peacefully’, ‘mat’, ‘snoozed’ are content words. Decoding is to convert printed / written symbols or words into sounds. Function words serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence and have little lexical meaning. E.g. a little cat sat peacefully on the mat and snoozed - 'a', 'on, 'the', 'and' are function words. GJT – Grammaticality Judgement Task – in which students are asked to judge whether a given sentence is correct or incorrect. Symbol-sound correspondences or grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPC) are the systematic relations between written symbols and the sounds they represent. E.g. in 'quick', <qu> = /kw/, <i> = /i/ and <ck>=/k/.