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Secondary education

Big difference between SATs level for speaking and listening and the overall English level

10 replies

RegularVoltaire · 13/03/2013 15:22

Dd has scored a 6.5 in her speaking and listening assessment, however, her overall SATs level in English is a 5.1

This seems like a massive difference to me.

Could there be any underlying issues for this, or is it simply laziness when it comes to written work?

Dds teacher thinks it's laziness/sloppiness ...I can't help thinking that maybe there's more to it?

Any thoughts?

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Kez100 · 13/03/2013 16:29

I think with speaking and listening it is not uncommon to find a very different grade. Whether there is a reason, hard to tell without knowing more.

My Daughter (not dyslexic and relatively shy albeit enjoyed drama) had a high B grade level S/L and a English grade C. (That would be a very rough estimate of national curriculum levels of 8.8 versus 7.5.)

My son (severely dyslexic and lover of drama) has a A/B grade for S/L and a writing grade of E (So national curriculum 9 versus 5).

Bearing in mind all the 0.1's and 0.5's are pretty subjective, it doesn;t appear miles apart - more like my daughter - especially if she isn't shy and likes S/L. Unless you have other reasosn to question what is going on.

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AllOverIt · 13/03/2013 16:49

English teacher here.

It's more common than you'd think for there to be a gap between S&L grades and R&W ones. Often children can be fluent, lively talkers with a wide ranging vocabulary. More often than not, a child will have a more restricted vocabulary when writing.

In the same vein, a child can make quite intuitive comments about a text when analysing it through S&L. They get caught up in the 'point - example - explain' thing we're always drumming into their heads

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AllOverIt · 13/03/2013 16:51

Sorry DD pressed 'send'

Meant to say, we're always drumming into their heads when writing an analysis of a text.

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HeathRobinson · 13/03/2013 16:54

Mine used to be the other way round - much better at the writing, too quiet and not confident enough at the speaking.

Surely every child is going to be at least slightly better at one than the other, depending on personality?

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AllOverIt · 13/03/2013 21:09

Yes that is also quite common Heath. Not everyone is comfortable talking in formal situations. We do test in a variety of settings, including paired work with friends and groups as opposed to always assess in a formal individual presentation.

The amount of times I've sat with one pair, when really I'm eavesdropping on the pair behind because I know the pupils behind me are quite shy so I can assess them informally without them knowing!