Abstract:

The given article is devoted to the structure and content of the language tests for children. The authors describe the language testing procedure on the example of the Russian language tests for children. The tests described are specially developed for the language assessment of those children learning Russian outside Russia. The article also covers the educational potential of the language tests as the instrument of the communication efficiency assessment in the specific situation outside the second native language environment.
A bilingual child has a unique opportunity of mediating between two linguo-cultures represented, that conditioned the choice of bilingual children as the target audience for this research.
The research is important for the development of the language tests for young learners system, the language test being not only the instrument of the communicative competence level assessment, but also the way to assess the abilities and commitments of a bilingual child to communicate efficiently.
Being in the given circumstances the instrument of the communicative efficiency assessment, a test helps to solve a number of tasks, connected with the second native language learning; in its turn, helps more successful and faster development of multicultural personality. The projection of the test results onto the education content will provide its correction with the purpose of making the conditions for the development of the abilities and commitments of a bilingual child to communicate efficiently with the representatives of two linguo-cultures.

Keywords:

Language test, language assessment, bilingualism, bilinguocultural adaptation, second native language, communication efficiency.