Practical ways to know if your teenager is growing beyond just learning a language.

One way is to wait for them to take a high-stakes proficiency test across the 4 main skills of Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking at the end of a term or course.

This is useful to gain official recognition of their language level and an internationally recognised qualification. What this doesn’t do though is give a more complete picture of the progress being made beyond the core language skills on the journey to becoming a young person who can make an impact beyond the classroom.

Proficiency tests show how the linguistic foundations are progressing, but I like to think of how young people are developing across 4 other areas.

Projects: the self guided explorations of topics that work they work on individually or in groups over a number of weeks.

Products: the finished pieces of creative work that they have published to express an idea or solve a problem they have noticed in the world.

Portfolios: the living documents that capture collections of their work, ideas and growth over time.

Presentations: the live talks that they give to communicate information and ideas to an audience.

Looking at their Proficiency level plus these 4 areas of assessment shows how well they are learning to Challenge, Collaborate, Create and Contribute to something much bigger than just passing a test.