Range of English Knowledge

At my school, and I assume other private English academies here, children get tested to determine what level class they should enter as they enroll. It seems to me that these tests aren't very effective. I have at least one or two kids in several of my classes who can't put a sentence together, or even a semblance of a sentence, while others in the same class are writing whole paragraphs and stories that pretty much make sense and that have only minor errors. It's really hard to teach to groups like that.


Here is an example. The assignment was to write a short story using sequence words "first," "next," "then," and "last," and to elaborate in between to make the story longer than four sentences and more interesting. This is in a class at level C1 (out of 2), which I think, is a third grade level for native speakers. This is what one kid wrote:



of farst is and Next and last is it
or samtimes many differeurnt or farst
Next last is we are make is it
and coud sosoantime camel of this
it. camel hoses cam citen cat
cat an farst Next last have it
we pepol to. have it farst Next
last. We coudn't heve one day
live in here and die or today
times qacrouck camel to on life


It's pretty poetic, actually. This is what most of his homework looks like. I told him that he shouldn't vomit language onto the paper, and that he should get help from me or another teacher if he doesn't understand the homework, but they never do that.

This is what another kid in the same class wrote:

First, The Mrs. McNoch have big pump seed.
Next, the pump grow same as a soccer ball.
Then Mrs. McNosh have soccer.
Last, the Mrs. Mcnosh is happy.

We had just read a story called "Mrs. McNosh and the Great Big Squash" about a woman who grows a squash as big as a house, who then digs it out and lives in it. I'm not sure if he misunderstood the homework and thought he was supposed to retell the story (the kids have trouble remembering the word "squash," but I mentioned pumpkin when trying to explain it, and they know that one), or if he was just being lazy and decided to rip off the story. Either way, the sentences are his own and they are easy to understand, albeit with a number of errors.