How might we use a holistic approach combining formal and informal assessment?
Some examples The Assessment of Comprehension and Expression (ACE) has become a more popular test in recent years as it covers a wider range of linguistic skills and tests slightly older children (611 years). It gives a useful profile so it is easy to see which areas a child might need most help with. It is likely that the child will have difficulties with many, if not all, these linguistic aspects. Once we have this test information, a decision then has to be made about which aspects to address first and which skills might need to build on others. It may also be that these skills (for example inferential and non-literal understanding) have not developed because there are still gaps in earlier semantic knowledge, in which case we need to be prepared to use informal assessment and professional knowledge to determine the sequence in which these skills develop and at what stage we should begin. We also need to consider the value of talking to the childs teacher or to the child to ascertai
