Over the past 15 years, there have been a number of significant changes within the German educational system as illustrated in the following examples: the practice of individually fostering each school pupil is now legally binding. The evaluation of learner achievements through teachers in the classroom is of particular importance in order to gain knowledge about individual development as a basis for planning lessons that take individual differences of students into account. One vital point of time for the assessment of students’ competencies is when teachers start teaching a new class as they need reliable information about their students’ prior knowledge. In Germany the majority of students are making the transition from primary to secondary school grade 4 (age app. 10). Thus, teachers at the beginning of grade 5 need a variety of practical methods and instruments to evaluate the new students.

The project to be presented explores the possibility of diagnosing the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) competence of young learners at the end of primary school with the help of a newly developed C-test. This C-test is designed to evaluate students’ EFL competence at the beginning of secondary school. C-tests aim at measuring general language ability (e.g., Asano, 2014) and have proven to be an effective instrument for assessing learners of different languages and in various age groups – however they have not yet been adapted for very young EFL learners. The C-test is based on the „reduced redundancy principle“ (cf. Babaii & Ansary, 2001). In contrast to Cloze-tests, in C-tests only parts of words are deleted, not whole words. Ideally, C-tests consist of four to five short texts that are content neutral, suitable for the target group, non-fictitious, without dialogues and authentic. Each text consists of 20 to 25 gaps with 80 to 100 words whereby every second or third word is mutilated.

Along with the development of C-tests, several studies have researched the use of test-taking strategies while taking a C-test (e.g., Grotjahn & Stemmer, 2002; Salehi & Sanjareh, 2013). Cohen (2011, p. 317) summarizes the findings of research on C-test-taking strategies as follows: “It has been found that response strategies predominantly involve micro-level processing. Since half the word is given, students who do not understand the macro-context have been observed to mobilize their vocabulary skills in order to fill in the appropriate discourse connector without indulging in higher level processing.” This seems to be true for language learners at a beginning and an intermediate level of proficiency.

In developing the research design the following principles need to be adhered to: (1) following the requirements of C-test criteria as sketched out above, especially following the redundancy principle; (2) take the prerequisites of the young learners into account, especially by referring to the curriculum with regard to familiar topics, vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing competencies; (3) developing an instrument that allows reliable and valid testing of EFL proficiency, and (4) including the children’s perspectives in the test development.

Based on these criteria, our research questions are as follows:

1. Psychometric quality of the test: Does the C-test show appropriate levels of item difficulty and item discrimination as well as a satisfactory reliability?
2. Validity of the C-test: Is there at least a medium correlation between the C-test scores and the grades in English being a first indicator of the test’s construct validity?
3. Test takers’ usage of strategies: Which test-taking strategies do fourth-graders apply when solving the C-test based on written reports?

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