Placement testing: Man and machine, doing the best we can?

Douglas McPherson
Texas A&M University at Qatar
Doha, Qatar

Placing students at optimal levels for English instruction is a paramount starting point, particularly when dealing with non-native speakers. Appropriate placement is beneficial for the students concerned, their peers, their instructors and eventually the institution itself. Inappropriate placement can result in de-motivated students, lack of student retention and the possibility of erosion of standards, eventually devaluing the qualifications awarded.

At Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ), we have developed a system to place students effectively. This placement system includes:

• triangulating data from external test scores with scores on a panel-marked, hand-written essay done at the University under supervised conditions; and
• data from a range of computer-based tests, including a computer-assessed essay, again conducted on-site under supervision.

Placement software is widely used to decide starting points for students in English programmes. Accuplacer was the software TAMUQ chose, but this paper suggests that relying on such a system alone would be a flawed approach.

The paper outlines the types of assessments used in order to place students in our classes. It also describes the need to get authentic hand-written essay samples from students, elicit opinions from the English faculty, and examine the strengths and shortcomings of external test data. Ongoing challenges are also discussed, including the need for inbuilt safeguards to take into account any seemingly disparate data, and for further validity testing, as well as longitudinal tracking of students’ progress throughout their University careers.