RUSSIAN LANGUAGE TESTS FOR CHILDREN: EDUCATIONAL POTENTIAL

The purpose of the article is to give a description of the Russian language tests for children (native and non-native speakers) recently developed at RUDN University. The authors explain the methodological principles of the test development and their structure in correlation with the age of the target audience (5-11 years old).

The paper focuses on the educational advantages of the language tests for children, which is especially important for the young learners who live outside of the language environment. Language tests for children have been widely discussed by the teachers and methodologists all over the world, especially in the context of the multilingual society of the XXI century.

The tests described were widely pretested in the Russian Language schools abroad; the pre-test results are presented in the article. The research relied on the descriptive, analytical and pedagogical observation methods, including pre-test results analysis and discussions with the children, their parents and teachers. The authors carefully analyzed the results to identify and select appropriate assessment methods.

The language tests for children described by the authors incorporate not only the language skills assessment, but also the cognitive skills assessment. The language tests are important not only for the children themselves as an achievement test, but also for the teachers and parents, being the motivation for further studies and facilitating the language teaching/learning process.