Assessing and reporting performances on pre-sessional EAP courses

the importance of getting it right. We hope that this paper will encourage this work to move into
the public domain so that we can all benefit from the insights gained.
Appendix A. End-of-course profile, English for Academic Purposes course 2001
NAME: XX XXX
Skill Comments
LISTENING She did not, to begin with, underst<strong>and</strong> very much of what was said to her, <strong>and</strong>
this probably accounted for the fact that she did not make as much progress as
she should have during the first two weeks. However, in week 4 she suddenly
appeared to underst<strong>and</strong> more of what was said, <strong>and</strong> showed more progress
ORAL PRESENTATION Her oral presentation was fine, <strong>and</strong> no doubt her presentations will get even
better with practice. She needs to think carefully though about how much
information she can usefully fit on overhead transparencies
GROUP DISCUSSION She tended to be on the quiet side for the first half of the course but her
participation improved in the final week. She knows that she should talk
more <strong>and</strong> says she will do her best to speak more in her undergraduate classes
READING She initially had trouble underst<strong>and</strong>ing the materials she was supposed to
read, but she is using better reading strategies <strong>and</strong> her reading is now getting
quicker <strong>and</strong> better focussed
WRITING For the first two weeks I did not see any improvement, but in the third week,
when she word-processed her essay, there seemed to be a great improvement.
She did not hesitate to give her own views, <strong>and</strong> she succeeded in making it
clear that these were indeed her own views
Additional comments:
XXX’s problem at the moment is mainly linguistic. She was a very conscientious student, but
she had such difficulties with English syntax <strong>and</strong> vocabulary that she was not able, until week 4
of the course, to demonstrate her improvement in study skills. However, in this final week her
comprehension suddenly improved; she spoke more <strong>and</strong> appeared to be more confident.
Academic tutor course.
Course Co-ordinator’s signature.
Date: 1st October 2001
Appendix B. Final assessment checklist (the full version is available at http://www.ling.
lancs.ac.uk/groups/ltrg/docs/ssreport.pdf)
Oral skills
J. Banerjee, D. Wall / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 5 (2006) 50–69 65
Listening Speed
Can respond quickly to what is said to him/her
Note-taking
Can underst<strong>and</strong> the gist of lectures
Can underst<strong>and</strong> the gist of seminar discussions
Can identify the main points in a lecture
Can identify the main points in a seminar discussion
Our evidence suggests
that the student
Has this
ability
Has had
some
difficulty
We have no
evidence
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