1.2 Model of Communicative Competencies in the NES
More specifically, the NES use selected descriptors from the CEFR proficiency scales to describe student competencies at Level A2 for the HSA and at Level B1/B1+ for the MSA. Table 2 gives an overview over the description of writing competencies in the NES targeting the MSA (CEFR Level B1).
Chapter –II Test Specifications
2.1 Overview Over the National Educational Standards Writing Competency Descriptors for the Mittlerer Schulabschluss
Although the NES target CEFR Levels A2 and B1, their evaluation is situated within a broader range of CEFR levels to be able to report also on students' proficiency above or below the NES. The main operational purpose of the standards-based writing tests is thus to report students' writing proficiency in English as first foreign language in terms of the five lower CEFR levels (i.e., Levels A1 to C1). No tasks targeted at proficiency level C2 were included in the standards-based assessment, because Level C1 already represents the level of expected English proficiency for entering university in Germany and only very few students, if any, were expected to be at Level C2 in the MSA sample.
Given this context, it was decided that multilevel tasks were not desirable for several reasons. First, similar to the Cambridge ESOL exams (cf. Shaw & Weir 2007), task demands for different CEFR levels needed to be operationalized as precisely as possible, which would have been more difficult with multilevel tasks that spanned a wide range of proficiency levels. Second, we found in preliminary studies that it can be challenging to train raters to use different rating scales for tasks targeting different proficiency levels reliably. Third, in contrast to DESI, the writing tasks needed to be administered to students with a wider range of proficiencies, making it challenging to write tasks that could elicit responses across a broad range of proficiency levels. We therefore adopted a level-specific approach for our study, similar to the approach mentioned in Brindley (2000, 2001) yet for a large-scale proficiency assessment in alignment with the CEFR. Writing tasks and rating scales were targeted to a specific CEFR level so that a successful student response is evidence of proficiency at the specific CEFR level that is targeted by the task. Consequently, it was most advisable to apply a test-centered standard-setting procedure to align the level-specific writing tasks directly to their targeted CEFR levels.
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