General

Language learnability provides essential information about the placement of a student/trainee in an educational pathway. Experience has shown that a choice for the most appropriate trajectory (‘slow’ or ‘fast’) for a prospective student/pupil depends on the speed with which students/pupils are expected to learn Dutch. Or whether a student/pupil will need a lot of guidance in learning the language or whether a student/pupil can also pick up language learning to a large extent independently. The test thus helps with the choice of pathway, which must be made during the intake. Prior education also provides some decisive information: the higher the prior education, the greater the chance that a student/pupil will be able to master a new language quickly. But the criterion of prior education is nevertheless perceived as insufficiently adequate. There are several reasons for this:

• in the absence of a diploma, there is no way to verify compliance with the criterion;
• the lack of knowledge regarding the content of the educational program for primary, secondary and for higher education in other countries;
• learning ability does not always depend on school experience

The key is suitable for:

• Continuing Education
• Vocational Education
• Higher Education
• Integration and/or reintegration programs, in language training, in corporate training or in the recruitment and selection of new staff

Content

The Language Literacy Test is a relatively short test with a variety of different types of tasks. These tasks are clustered around the (cognitive) tasks: making analogies, completing sequences, ordering and working with symbols. The learnability test determines the extent to which the (candidate) student/learner has mastered skills that facilitate learning a language (NT2). These underlying skills are derived from commonly used teaching materials and the teaching methods they contain. Students who are presented with the test do not (yet) need to have a command of Dutch. However, they must be literate in Latin. The test consists of 23 exercises divided into 7 sections. These exercises have been selected on the basis of their ability to discriminate between ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ learners. Each section is preceded in the test by one or more examples. These examples show what is meant by the different tasks.