Developing Can Do statements for younger KET and PET candidates
Recent trends towards students taking Cambridge ESOL’s KET and PET exams at a younger age have led to the development of versions of those exams featuring content aimed at the 11-14 age range – KET for Schools and PET for Schools.
Considerable work has been carried out in the development of these exams to ensure that, while the content of the exams differ, they are pitched at exactly the same linguistic levels as the general versions and continue to reflect the corresponding CEFR levels (A2, B1).
Part of the process of the production of these new exams has included the development of Can Do statements appropriate to the 11-14 age group.
Can Do statements are simple descriptions of practical ability at different levels – eg. ‘CAN write letters or make notes on familiar or predictable subjects’. The transparency of Can Do statements allows them to be interpreted by anyone involved in learning or teaching a language, even if they have no formal training in linguistics.
Developing the Can Do statements for 11-14 year olds required surveying descriptions of the development and skills profiles of language learners of that age group and making comparisons with those of other age groups. This information was cross-referred to the CEFR levels with respect to the relevance to that age group of the situations, themes, topics, notions, etc used.
A total of 36 statements were developed to be trialled using self assessment from a sample of 827 candidates in the target age group, with Cantonese, Italian, Argentinian Spanish and Greek as first languages. Assessments from 26 teachers were also taken into account. The responses from these samples, matched against their actual performance in the exam, were able to validate the 36 Can Do statements for use in the KET for Schools and PET for Schools handbooks.
In time it is expected that this work be added to, creating a comprehensive list of Can Do statements for young learners aged 7-14.
This article has been taken from Development of Can Do statements for KET and PET for Schools by Szilvia Papp. The full article, together with the 36 Can Do statements mentioned, can be found in Research Notes 36.
