While most language training organizations run periodical standardized tests to assess their students, at Chatterbox we believe standard test assess the wrong things in the wrong ways.
Standard language tests put a lot of stress on students and do not provide a purpose or any real information on how well you manage the language in the real world.
Standard tests tend to exclusively assess literacy in a language, while companies and universities actually need people who can apply the knowledge of a language to real-life situations. For example, they need to know if you are able to communicate effectively as a member of a team, if you can present a topic clearly and concisely, if you are able to persuade or discourage someone during a meeting.
That's why, at Chatterbox we've banned multiple-choice exercises and grammar tasks, standard tests and marks. We constantly assess our students through projects and tasks and we offer official certificates and diplomas which support this view. We are not interested in showing our students' academic achievements, rather we want our students to focus on enhancing their personal qualities through languages.
Teaching languages is a people business. We believe assessing students should be more about people and less about scores.
