A Special Case for Young Learner Language Assessment


Reaction paper by ; Licda: Sylvia Johnson S.



Young Language Learners are those who are learning a foreign or second language and who are doing so during the first six or seven years of formal schooling.

Bilingual learners are learners who learn two ( or more) languages to some level of proficiency ( Bialystok, 2001 )



Children are growing cognitively, socially, emotionally and physically. They are developing literacy knowledge, skills and understandings that may or may not be transferred from their first language; young children take some time to develop in this way and most are still doing so as they begin to learn the new language at school.





Assessment has the power to change children’s lives; the effect of assessment may be positive or negative. Effective assessment provides valuable information to educators, parents, administrators and students themselves. Young learners are particularly vulnerable in their formative years to assessment that sends messages of worth and status and that thus perpetuates power relationships in society. Teachers and assessors are obliged to examine the impact of their assessment on young learners and to work towards a positive impact for the present and future.