An important task of school-age children immigrating to another country – new arrivals – is to learn the majority language of the host country as a basis for educational achievement and for building social networks. For educators, it is important to be able to monitor the majority-language acquisition process of new arrivals in order to be able to give those students the most appropriate academic challenges as well as opportunities for majority-language acquisition.

Existing language assessment instruments in Denmark are not well suited for this purpose. Some easy-to-administer instruments are suited to examine only relatively advanced language and reading skills. Other instruments need to be administered one-on-one by a speech/language professional and require highly time-consuming follow-up analyses of audio/video data.

The second-language assessment instrument presented here was developed to evaluate early language acquisition processes (mainly phonological learning and basic vocabulary), which take place during the “silent period”, characteristic of most new arrivals. The phonological tests draw on experiences from laboratory testing of phonological reorganization in language learners (AX discrimination and identification tests). They present students with perceptual tasks that are hard with a nonnative phonological system but become easier the more the student has reorganized their phonological system to cope with Danish phonological contrasts. In addition to early processes during the silent period, the instrument evaluates later processes (advanced vocabulary and knowledge of morpho-syntactic rules).

The assessment instrument for grade 1-9 is self-administrated and is run from an it-platform that feeds back specific information about results to educators. For example, the educator can see if a student struggles with a specific phonological contrast or a specific morphological element; or a student might have highly functional Danish-language skills for everyday conversation but be shown to lack in more advanced, academic vocabulary. Thus, the instrument is designed to give educators insights in details of majority-language acquisition, which might not be so evident from everyday encounters with new arrivals, and accordingly help educators offer pertinent language support as well as suitable academic challenges for each student.

Psychometric properties of the instrument (e.g., validity and reliability) are presented for a sample of 437 students who took part in a study on the effect of sheltered instruction vs. mainstream instruction of new arrivals in Denmark. Finally, it is discussed how the instrument might be adapted to other language settings.

Keywords: New arrivals, immigrant children, second-language acquisition, language test.