[Bestplus] RE: [Best plus] Language Complexity vs. Grammar

[Betty Stone]

To my BEST (Plus) Friends!
 
I have just been reading this discussion--it began on the day I left for vacation, and when I first saw it from a paid Internet cafe in Barcelona, I didn't respond (cuz I didn't have my rubric with me!) 
 
Hindsight is great--I would score a 3-2-2....and I agree with Teresa who would like to see more annotated examples of 3-2-2 scores which use poorly formed sentences.
 
The mantra of "scoring what you have," not what you can understand, keeps coming back to me. Even so, this student seems to me to be clearly beyond minimal in LC (thus a 2, not a 1). He is is missing the actual "because" benchmark, though an ESOL teacher hears it nonetheless. In Olympic terms, he takes a big step back on his landing though the vault is decent. But in the final analysis, he HAS much more than what a minimal 1 would have (infinitive, prep phrases, modal "can" and attempted because.)
 
What is of concern in general for me, is that my experience to date shows that with a few consecutive 3-2-2 responses, the program of BEST+ will shoot this student way up, lengthen the testing and result in an SPL of 5-6. And, DOE assumes that SPL 7 is pretty near the top of DOE students.  In my mind, this is not the language of an SPL 5/6. In my detailed feedback on the video, Carol noted that I sometimes tended to score a bit higher--so I am mindful of this, all the while bearing in mind the sea-change of BEST+ vs BEST (re communication vs discrete grammar).
 
Perhaps it comes back to issues I have always had with the SPL document: uneven distribution of SPLs 0---1-2-3-4----5---6----7-8------9-10 and overall inflated rating of high beginners and low intermediates.
 
I've mixed a couple of fruits into this salad....Curious to know what others think about how the SPLs get inflated so fast, in general, and on the BEST+. I'd much prefer a face-to-face schmooze, but the list will have to do.
Betty

Dianne Worth <dianeworth at hotmail.com> wrote:

I agree with 2 for LC, and would need to have "been there" for scoring communication.  I think it could be a 3 with intonation carring the meaning for "through".  I don't feel "for" for "because" requires filling in at all :)

Diane




>From: "Brown, Teresa" <teresa at CambridgeMA.GOV> 
>To: <iris.broudy at SDH.state.ma.us>, <JaneS at doe.mass.edu>,<koconnor at framingham.k12.ma.us>, <bestplus at lists.literacytent.org> 
>Subject: RE: [Bestplus] RE: [Best plus] Language Complexity vs. Grammar 
>Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 16:38:52 -0400 
> 
>Hi all, 
> 
>I agree with Iris.  In addition to the prepositional phrase and the modal, the student has used an infinitive correctly, so I think the balance of the sentence is well constructed. 
> 
>This is another good example, though, of where the training manual doesn't have enough examples in the transcripts for the complexity shown in the answers of our low-level students.  I would like to see more examples of answers rated 3-2-2, particularly when they're not well formed sentences, but go beyond strings of phrases. 
> 
> 
>Teresa Brown 
>ESOL Coordinator 




Betty J. Stone
ESOL Program Administrator
SCALE - Somerville Center for Adult Learning Experiences
167 Holland Street, Somerville, MA 02144
Phone: 617-625-6600, Ext. 6933
FAX: 617-623-8528
bjstone13 at yahoo.com

		
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