Need Ideas for Initial Assessment of Private Students!

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violetablanca

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Joined
Jan 21, 2010
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
Argentina
Hello to everyone,

I live abroad teaching EFL, and am in the process of starting my own tutoring business (not with other teachers, just on my own). But nonetheless, my goal is to be as professional and have my students feel as satisfied with the classes as possible.

Part of my idea to accomplish this goal is to demonstrate to my potential students (which will probably be private, individual students) that I "mean business" is to give them about an hour or so of a free lesson for our first meeting, in which I would assess them and their level of English proficiency, and their motivations and needs for learning the language.

I have a general idea of what I would like this assessment to include- the 4 main components of language learning (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). But in terms of specific questions to ask and what resources to use, I am completely stumped.

Also, because I might be tutoring children as well as adults, I know that I would not use the same material for everyone.

Additionally, from very early on, one can tell if a student would fall into a range of basic, intermediate, etc., and there's no point in evaluating a potentially advanced student with material that asks him or her to conjugate the present simple (I hope that makes sense). What I mean is that I would ideally like to have more than just one "one-size-fits-all" form of assessing my students.

Any and all ideas (including books, rubrics, questionnaires, online resources, anything and everything!) are extremely welcome! Thank you!

-L
 

Alex Case

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Joined
Apr 20, 2008
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
British English
Home Country
UK
Current Location
Japan
I just use this form to interview them

https://www.usingenglish.com/files/pdf/needs-analysis-level-check-interview-form.pdf

As it has a wide range of tenses it's a good test of level, and at the same time you are letting them talk about themselves and finding out something about their reasons for learning English and needs. For a written test, I guess you could cut and paste from books that have diagnostic tests in them, e.g. the yellow grammar book (How English Works??) by Michael Swan
 

violetablanca

Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2010
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
Argentina
Thank you for your responses!

I found the needs analysis level check interview sheet to be very helpful, I think that it will serve me well... I still have to look into the Michael Swan book, though.

Once again, thanks a million! :)

-L
 
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