An assessment of whether there is a need for a placement test at the University of Namibia Language Centre

Abstract

This paper is a literature review that assesses whether there could be a need to implement placement testing at the University of Namibia (UNAM) Language Centre (LC). At the moment, students are placed into different course levels based on their high school leaving scores of English. The paper highlighted the qualities of testing that make a test result reliable and valid for the intended decision. Therefore, both literature on the use of placement tests and high school leaving score were reviewed for a well-informed assessment results. Literature shows that although the placement testing seems to have yield good results in some settings, comparably, it also seems to be in favour of the use school leaving scores in language placements