LANGUAGE - LLATL | Placement Tests Explained

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These LLATL Skills Evaluations are offered as a tool to help you establish the correct placement of your children in this language program.

We sincerely hope that you are not guided by grade levels, but rather by what understanding the child already has of the various language skills. A child does not need only knowledge of the various language arts, but clear understanding. Mastery of skill comes only after that skill has been understood and exercised. It is imperative that you establish exactly where your child’s mastered skills are, and which skills need further work.

If your child has not yet learned to read, you will naturally start on the Blue Book set. This is a complete program for the beginner reader. For children who have the reading experience, you will need to assess your child’s skill level by going through the Scope and Sequence and establish where he/she has understanding and mastery. We suggest that you begin at grade 2 level, even with older children. You may feel tempted to skip the lower grade evaluations with your 12-year­ old, but it may be that your child has not understood some of the basic skills taught at this level. Some 14-year-olds have not been able to describe or give examples of ‘conjunctions’ (second-grade grammar). You would not necessarily place your child in the Red Book (2nd-grade skills), but it would be an indication of skills which need to be practised before entering at a higher level.

Go through the list of skills in each level, and ask your child to describe and give you an example of each skill, part of speech, etc. as given in the Scope and Sequence. It is advisable to tackle this task in “bite-size pieces” over several days or even weeks. The time you spend on this evaluation will not be wasted – not only will you be establishing your children’s skill levels, but you will also be learning together at the same time.

The grade level at which there is a substantial amount of work with which your child is not familiar would be the level at which he/she is likely, to begin with, LLATL. You may find that your child needs to work only on his grammar at a particular level although he has a good grasp of the other skills, in which case it would be wise to begin him at that level even if you use only the grammar lessons in that book. The materials could then be kept for a younger child, and your child would move on to the next level of LLATL and work through the program from that point on after having established solid foundations.

Please note that the LLATL program is colour coded rather than graded. Thus your child would work at his own level, not at a predetermined grade-age level. He may need to start at a lower grade than you expected, but it is better for him to establish the foundations and then move more quickly through the higher levels than to struggle with work in which he is not firmly established. In this way, he will reach his full potential in his own time, and that is our goal for our children – to create a learning environment in which their full potential can be reached.

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