type story
Testing Day
Pablo from Venezuela
Ms. Villanova thinks back to how hard Pablo has been trying at school. As a new immigrant from Venezuela, Pablo began school with beginner English proficiency levels and has been working hard to improve his English through his subject matter classes.
Testing Language or Content Knowledge?
The next day, Ms. Villanova congratulates Pablo on his high score, especially in his writing. Pablo thanks Ms. Villanova and shares that using google translate helped him to showcase his subject matter knowledge because he would have had a hard time communicating it with his current level of English.
Is this the only way to assess MLs' learning?
She feels frustrated that although his score accurately measured his subject matter knowledge, the score on his retake of the subject matter test will undoubtedly be lower because it is more a measure of his English proficiency than his subject matter knowledge.
Ms. Villanova realizes that Pablo’s score on the assessment may accurately capture his subject matter knowledge but will need to be discounted because he wasn’t allowed to use any translation software.
