License DELNA

The DELNA Screening and DELNA Short Writing Task are efficient, cost-effective ways to identify English language needs. You can license both assessments through the DELNA Office, in conjunction with UniServices.

At the University of Auckland, students begin with a filter assessment, the DELNA Screening. If necessary, this is followed by a diagnosis made up of a DELNA Short Writing Task and Listening and Reading Tasks licensed from the Language Testing Research Centre at the University of Melbourne.

The DELNA Screening is effective for both students with an English-speaking background and students with English as an additional language.

The DELNA Screening is an online assessment that consists of two tasks:

1. Vocabulary (7 minutes)
   This task is designed to assess students’ knowledge of the meanings of words they are likely to come across in academic texts.
   
   
2. Timed reading (10 minutes)
   This is a 73-item task that measures the ability to decode a text under time pressure. A good implicit knowledge of sentence-level grammar and an understanding of English word collocations are an essential prerequisite for successful performance on this component.

The DELNA Screening can be run and administered entirely by a licensee, and is made up of a student-facing tasks site and a staff-facing administration site.

Student-facing tasks site

The University of Auckland advertises the DELNA Screening as a 30-minute assessment. However, the actual time varies as students can practise before each task. It is rare for anybody to take the full 30 minutes.

Large numbers of students can easily be assessed in a few hours, depending on the size of your computer labs.

• The DELNA invigilators each computer onto the screening site at the beginning of the session.
• The Screening site provides all the instructions students need as they do the assessment.
• After each student completes the screening, the computers automatically return to the beginning of the assessment.
• The DELNA invigilators answer any of the students’ questions, and move new students onto the computers when the previous student has completed the assessment.

Staff-facing administration site

The DELNA Screening is easy to administer, as it is a computer-based assessment. The computer scores the results and produces result bands for each student. You can email students with their results, and advise them about what they should do next.

• You can inform high-scoring students that they will develop academic literacy independently, and advise them of any appropriate academic support available on campus.
• You can direct low-scoring students to further diagnostic assessment and language enrichment programmes.

You can export data from the screening into most database systems. Our developers can create custom export-formats to suit most needs.

Security

The DELNA Screening is administered to students under secure conditions and clients must ensure the security of the DELNA Screening by employing staff to supervise in campus labs. The University of Auckland normally employs one supervising staff member for every 25-35 students.

Technical information

The DELNA Screening is a hosted solution, accessed over the internet using all major web browsers including Internet Explorer 6, Mozilla Firefox 3, Apple Safari 3 and their later versions. This greatly minimises IT compatibility issues.

For data exchange of information over the network, the format is CSV file.

The DELNA Short Writing Task is part of the diagnostic assessment, and is done with pen and paper.

Students are presented with information in a table or diagram, which they must interpret, describe and elaborate on using approximately 250 words.

A task of this nature, which assesses the ability to understand and interpret information, is regarded as a key component of academic literacy.

Results

This task is rated analytically on a 6-point scale for fluency, content and form. Students are given written and oral feedback about their performance and how they can improve on this during their studies.

The University of Auckland asks low-scoring students to pick up their results in person from a DELNA Language Adviser, so they can discuss the appropriate language enrichment on campus.

DELNA raters

The University of Auckland’s DELNA raters have university qualifications in academic writing and years of experience in language teaching and assessment. They regularly refresh their rating practice by attending annual rater training sessions, and using the DELNA Online Rater Training System. This system is available to licensees.

To find out more about licensing, including costs, please contact the DELNA Office:

DELNA
Level 3, Kate Edger Information Commons (Building 315)
Rooms 332, 336, 338
11 Symonds Street
City Campus
The University of Auckland
Phone: +64 9 923 8947
Email: delna@auckland.ac.nz
Open: Monday to Friday 9am–4pm

DELNA Manager
Dr Morena Botelho de Magalhães
Email: m.magalhaes@auckland.ac.nz

DELNA Administrator
Rachel Rogan
Email: rachel.rogan@auckland.ac.nz

Academic Adviser of DELNA
Associate Professor Rosemary Erlam
Email: r.erlam@auckland.ac.nz