Benchmarking Literacy for
the ESL Classroom

By William McMichael*

The abilities to use text to communicate ideas in writing, understand written information and make interpretations based upon it, and to perform basic mathematical functions in an independent manner are skills that one carries across languages. Learners who lack these skills face additional challenges when trying to learn another language and may be disadvantaged in the ESL classroom.

In order to address this problem, Citizenship and Immigration Canada contracted the Centre for Language Training and Assessment in 1997 to develop a set of tasks for assessing the literacy needs of ESL learners as specified in the Canadian Language Benchmarks (Supply and Services Canada,1996). The result was the Canadian Language Benchmarks Literacy Assessment (CLBLA), introduced in 1998.

The CLBLA is unique among ESL assessments in its use of firstlanguage tasks, essential in determining client's literacy skills, which are transferable to the acquisition of English as a Second Language. Its aim is to determine whether a learner's successful acquisition of English will require attention and support in areas other than the purely linguistic.

The CLBLA is unique among ESL assessments in its use of firstlanguage tasks, essential in determining client's literacy skills, which are transferable to the acquisition of English as a Second Language. Its aim is to determine whether a learner's successful acquisition of English will require attention and support in areas other than the purely linguistic.

The CLBLA is unique among ESL assessments in its use of firstlanguage tasks, essential in determining client's literacy skills, which are transferable to the acquisition of English as a Second Language. Its aim is to determine whether a learner's successful acquisition of English will require attention and support in areas other than the purely linguistic.

The CLBLA begins with a questionnaire on the client's past education and employment, which is completed with the assessor's assistance. Information is also obtained about the client's reading and writing habits. This questionnaire may be administered in English or using a translation. The overall direction of the assessment is determined by the answers given and on the degree to which the client is able to complete the form without assistance.

From this point, the assessor takes the client on an individualized path through a series of reading, writing and numeracy tasks, always responding to the skills that the client demonstrates. In this way, cli ents can be advanced to an appropriate skill level quickly, allowing more time to diagnose strengths and weaknesses within that level.

Although the information the CLBLA provides on the needs of learners helps ESL providers to respond appropriately, it does not make specific recommendations as to what levels of literacy mean to placement within ESL classes or ESL literacy programs. Learner placement into appropriate classes remains at the discretion of the individual program administrators who must interpret the results of the assessment in relation to programming and placement considerations.

*William McMichael is currently vicechairperson of the Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks. He is past president of the TESL Canada Federation (Teachers of English as a Second Language).

For more information, contact:
The Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks,
803200 Elgin Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 1L5,
Tel: (613) 230-7729, Fax: (613) 230-9305,
E-mail: info@language.ca
Literacy benchmarks are listed at
http://www.language.ca

The free Adobe(R) Acrobat(R) Reader allows you to view, navigate, and print PDF files across all major computing platforms. To download Acrobat(R) Reader click on the button.