Because of international conflicts, young refugees are a new target group in vocational education not only in Germany but all European countries. Although struggling with an uncertain legal status and a new language those learners need to be given the chance to find their individual professional orientation to start an apprenticeship.

Professional orientation in this sense is dependent on a self-discovery (Kremer, 2010). As known by empirical research to support this inner personal process young people shall become aware of their own social and personal competences. Competence assessment shall be tied to the strengths of the young people (Lippegaus-Grünau, 2009) in order to create motivation for the process of vocational choice. And a process to enhance self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) needs to be integrated in the design and implementation of such an assessment tool. 

Activity-oriented assessment tools (using observers to assess the shown performance given by the participants) integrating a positive feedback culture can fulfill these demands and enable learners to build up a better understanding of their personal strengths necessary for this successful transition.

Because of the big importance of communication and language skills in existing activity-oriented tools for competence assessment these instruments are not suitable for learners acting in their second language and/or having language problems unrestrictedly. In fact, those assessment tools usually force participants to use a language register characterized by academic language level and the need to adjust language skills to difficult situations in prescribed social manner.

Lacking those language skills does not only have effects to motivation of participants but can also prevent to show the full capacity of potential social and personal competencies. Therefore, it is a need to adjust competence assessment and feedback to the language demands of this target group, in order to reduce a distortion of results.

Following this motivation the presentation will introduce the language-sensitive competence tool “Mission: possible” and its evaluation results of the first implementation in a prevocational class for refugees in Germany. Research questions of the described design project were: How can an assessment tool be designed to support learners with language problems in performing their personal and social competences. What kind of effects on the self-efficacy can be observed after the assessment process?

In designing our language-sensitive competence assessment tool, we used combinations of established assessment methods, such as self-reflection, self-presentation, biographical interview, role-play, cooperative learning and exercises from adventure pedagogy.

In order to address linguistic problems of the learners these methods are modified using particular pillars derived from approaches in the scientific field of second and foreign language learning, for example:

• Adjusting methods to the different language skills of the participants, also not focusing social, personal and language competences on a high level at the same time
• Using situations with high identification for the participants and their social background
• Integration of assessment situations and methods focusing different aspects of language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) in order to give participants the chance to switch between the different competences and to prevent getting an observation result emphasizing one part of communication skills only
• Use of particular didactic media, standard phrases, visualizations and other devices known from language learning arrangements to help learners to help themselves
• Motivating and learner-oriented correction of language mistakes in an atmosphere of support and fairness, honoring mistakes as a relevant step of development, and building up a feedback culture based on criteria of attributional feedback in order to prevent constraints and avoidance strategies of the participants

By using these principles, the assessment process could also support a sense of achievement as part of self-efficacy increasing (Bandura, 1997).

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