establishing english proficiency

[romans08]

I am a student (junior in college) starting a new esl program in my school for cafeteria workers (as of now, mostly spanish-speaking). I am on the brink of starting the classes, and I was wondering what the best way was for me to go about establishing english proficiency.

I suspect some workers are illiterate or at least have very poor basic reading and writing skills in their own language and in english.

Are there specific tests that establish this? The on-line quizes I have seen seem simple enough, but, I'm not sure how effective they will be in indicating what I want to know. I want a test basic enough so that I will get an accurate sense of where the workers are in their english proficiency. I do not want to give them a test that is probably too difficult.

Can anyone please help me?!

[Tdol]

Can you interview them? Illiteracy can be a very delicate issue and you might be able to get that sort of information better from speaking to them individually. An online quiz wouldn't show that- if they wanted to keep it quiet, and many do, they would just point and click and still stand a one in four chance of getting the right answer.

[romans08]

tdol,

thank you for your advise...very simple but very true..i will absolutely interview them...thanks a lot

i have a number of student-volunteers working with me. since it would take longer for me to interview each client individually, do you think it would be effective in creating some standard questions that my volunteers can ask their interviewee in order to establish literacy? do you think it would be effective to go through one of those basic online quizes together with the interview to guage where they are at in addition to questioning to establish literacy?

i appreciate your input!

[Tdol]

There should be some standardisation and having the online quiz as well is good.

[romans08]

tdol,

perfect! just what i was thinking...we're on the same page on this one

thanks again for your help.