WIDA MODEL and the CEFR

Check out the MODEL/CEFR linking tool.

Read the MODEL/CEFR research report.

Transcript

Hi everybody. Thanks so much for watching this. My name's Mark Chapman. I'm joined by my colleague David MacGregor to talk to you about the WIDA MODEL test and the CEFR. That's the common European framework of reference. We'll explain more about what it is we're gonna tell you about on the next slide. I work on the WIDA assessment team. I'm senior innovation researcher at WIDA and I've worked with the MODEL test for many, many, many years. David, do you wanna say hi? Yeah, hi, my name is David MacGregor. I'm an assessment researcher at WIDA, and I've been working on and off on MODEL more or less since it's inception. Great, thank you David. If we take a look at the next slide, we'll tell you a little bit about today's contents. Mark, so what can you tell us about WIDA MODEL online in the CEFR? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks David. I'm sure if you're watching this, you probably know a little bit about the MODEL test. But model is used around the world in several hundred K through 12 international schools where English is the language of instruction. And like all WIDA assessments, WIDA MODEL is used to measure students' development of their English language skills, the skills that they need to be successful in the K through 12 classroom. The common European framework of reference of CEFR is an internationally meaningful language proficiency framework and it measures six main levels of language development. So A1 and A2 are the beginner levels. B1 and B2 are the intermediate levels and C1 and C2 measure highly proficient levels of language development. So we think it would be very helpful for MODEL test users and WIDA has received a lot of feedback about this to be able to understand MODEL scores in terms of CEFR levels. That can help schools, educators, students get more detailed information about their students' language development, not just a WIDA score, but what that score means in terms of a CEFR level. So David and I and a team from WIDA worked with a group of 20 experienced educators at an international school in Madrid to look at the WIDA test to look at the CEFR levels and to try and link those WIDA scores to the specific CEFR levels. And in the next slide, David is gonna tell you more about our findings. So David, over to you for some info about the results. Alright, thanks Mark. So based on the recommendations of the educators, we've determined that the grade one-two test measures up to about the B1 or B2 level. And that depends on the domain being tested. So whether it's reading, listening, speaking, or writing, the grade three-five test measures up to the B2 level. The grade six-eight test measures up to the B2 or C1 level, again, depending on the domain. And the grade 9-12 test measures up to the C1 level. And if you wanna see the full concordance tables, you can scan the QR code at the bottom of the screen. How do you use the concordance tables? What you wanna do is look up the student's scale scores in each of the domains, which you can find on their individual student report or ISR here. And so, for example, this is a student who took the grade 1-2 summative test. So this student, for example, scored a 319 on the listening test. We wanna make sure that you're looking at the concordance tables for grades one and two, and we find that the 319 lies above the highest cut score here in the listening scale score range. So that means that that score corresponds to a CEFR level of B2 for listening. That student got a 276 on the writing test. You see that falls between the 271 and 306 range for writing, which means that that student's CEFR level for writing would be an A2. So Mark, is there anything else we have to keep in mind here? Yeah, just a couple of things David. And thanks so much for running through how to use that concordance table. That's really useful. So I think, as you know, it was pretty clear from what David was saying, it's necessary to determine a student's CEFR level for each language domain separately. So their listening, reading, writing, speaking levels could well be different. So we need to look those up separately using the concordance table. Also, it's important to note that only the scale scores from the WIDA MODEL online test have been linked to the CEFR. That's based on the methods that we used in our linking study with those 20 educators. So please do not assume that a particular WIDA PL or proficiency level corresponds to a particular CEFR level. The work we've done links just the scale scores to the CEFR levels. And finally, as you can see in the last bullet, it is possible that students may have higher CEFR levels than indicated by their model scale scores. You know, MODEL is a test for young learners. It's designed to measure the WIDA English Language Development Standards, but MODEL isn't necessarily designed to measure up to the highest levels of proficiency described by the CEFR. For example, the CEFR C2 levels measure a very, very high level of language proficiency and language development. And that's not a level that we attempt to measure on the MODEL test. Alright, thanks so much to you all for listening. If we go to the next slide, we'll close out. You can scan that QR code to get the full report that David and I have given you a snapshot of, and you can reach out to WIDA's Client Service Center at that email address with any questions. Thank you all so much for listening.