DESCRIPTORS

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DESCRIPTORS ISCED 1, 2

• Milena Ivšek, Slovenia

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1. Criteria by which a descriptor is chosen and
formulated

• 1.Listening, 2.Reading, 3.Spoken interaction (in
  a dialogue situation), 4.Oral reproduction
  (description, presentation, narrative, etc.),
  5.Writing expression (report, article, etc), 6.
  Mediation (summary, report, translation etc.) are
  not all explicitly present in the curriculum for
  Slovene as LS

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1. Criteria by which a descriptor is chosen and
formulated

• Who?
• How?
• Support in preparation of
• descriptors for external assessment of knowledge.
• research development project New culture of
  knowledge assessment (2005 -2006?)

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Shortcomings

• Students have not been involved enough in the
  process of formulating the descriptors.
• Spoken interaction (in dialogue situation) and
  Mediation (summary, report, translation, etc.) -
  the main shortcomings appear in Slovene and less
  so in other languages where this is planned well.

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2. What particular (extra) considerations went
into that formulation?

• 1. Understanding the target audience teachers.
• 2. The guidelines are the curriculum goals and
  expected achievements.
• 3. Students abilities (age, grade and medium
  level of the required knowledge, and not minimum
  or maximum)

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Shortcomings

• 1. Descriptors are not oriented enough towards
  the development
• 2. Lack of holistic approach to a special topic
  in a particular subject (activities as reading,
  listening, speaking and writing).

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3. What the next higher or lower level of
reference (proficiency) would look like for that
particular aspect of competence?

• 3. Semantic competence
• Are able to explain the meaning of the given
  word/word phrase from the text
• b. Are able to select appropriate and effective
  vocabulary corresponding to the meaning (while
  producing texts)
• c. They are aware that the meaning of the word
  affects the meaning of the text
•  

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2. Metalinguistic activities

• ISCED 1
• b. Students identify the structure of sentence
  and the correlation between sentences
• c. Students identify the features of
  some/selected texts
• ISCED 2
• b. Students identify the structure of sentence
  and the correlation between sentences and
  classify and categorize them
• c. Students identify the features of selected
  texts and classify and categorize them

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A sample of literature text

• ISCED 1
• a. Students paraphrase (in speech or writing)
  their imaginative, conceptual and feeling
  perception of literary characters (describe a few
  motives for their actions), identify time and
  location, summarise the text with technical
  accuracy (show proficient level of response to
  literary text).
• ISCED 2
• a. Students identify and describe (orally or in
  writing) literary characters ... See the handout!
  
• In drama or play they differentiate between the
  stage instructions and dialogues, they
  understand, describe or retrieve information from
  texts (talk about the importance of instructions
  for understanding texts) in comedy they identify
  and describe the comic perspective evaluate the
  role of theatre/puppet show or radio play
  features and their importance for understanding
  the text (show proficient level of response to
  literary texts)

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Shortcomings

• 1. Descriptors still lack the in-depth
  understanding of the reading texts and the
  critical judgment/evaluation to some extent
  despite the fact that this is required at all
  stages, of course, at different levels of
  interpretation.
• 2. As for the hierarchical requirements of each
  descriptor, the more prevailing component is
  still the quantity rather than the quality.