SUMMARY
Assessing Reading
In foreign language learning, reading is
likewise a skill that teachers simply expect learners to acquire. Basic,
beginning-level textbooks in a foreign language presuppose a student's
reading ability if only because it's a book that is the medium. Most formal tests use
the written word as a stimulus for test-taker response, even oral interviews may
require reading performance for certain tasks Reading, arguably the most essential
skill for success in all educational contexts, remains a skill of paramount
importance as we create assessments of general language ability.
Is reading so natural and normal that
learners should simply be exposed to
written
texts with no particular instruction? Will they just absorb the skills necessary
to convert their perception of a handful of letters into meaningful chunks of information? Not
necessarily. For learners of English, two primary hurdles must be cleared in order to
become efficient readers. First, they need to be able to master fundamental bottom-up
strategies for processing separate letters, words, and phrases, as well as
top-down, conceptually driven strategies for comprehension.
Second, as part of that top-down
approach, second language readers must develop appropriate content and
formal schemata-background information and cultural experience to carry out
those interpretations effectively.
The
assessment of reading ability does not end with the measurement of comprehension.
Strategic pathways to full understanding are often important factors to include in assessing
learners, especially in the case of most classroom assessments that are formative in
nature. An inability to comprehend may thus be traced to a need to enhance a
test-taker's strategies for achieving ultimate comprehension, For example, an
academic technical report may be comprehensible to a student at the sentence level, but
if the learner has not exercised certain strategies for noting the discourse
conventions of that genre, misunderstanding may occur.
As we consider a number of different
types or genres of written texts, the conponents of reading ability, and
specific tasks that are commonly used in the assessment of reading, let's not
forget the unobservable nature of reading. Like listening, one cannot see the
process of reading, nor can one observe a specific product of reading. Other than
observing a reader's eye movements and page turning, there is no technology that
enables us to "see" sequences of graphic symbols traveling from the pages of a book
into compartments of the brain (in a possible bottom-up process). Even more
outlandish is the notion that one might be able to watch information from the
brain make its way down onto the page (in typical top-down strategies).
Further, once something is read-information from the written text is stored-no technology
allows us to empirically measure exactly what is lodged in the brain. All
assessment of reading must be carried out by inference.
Types
(Genres) Of Reading
Each type or genre of written text has
its own set of governing rules and conventions. A reader must be able to
anticipate those conventions in order to process meaning efficiently.
With an extraordinary number of genres present in any literate culture, the reader's
ability to process texts must be very sophisticated. Consider the following abridged list
of common genres, which ultimately form part of the speci: fications for
assessments of reading ability
Genres
of reading
1. Academic
reading
2. Job-related
reading
3. Personal
reading
When we realize that this list is only the
beginning, it is easy to see how over whelming it is to learn to read in a
foreign language! The genre of a text enables readers to apply
certain schemata that will assist them in extracting appropriate meaning. If, for
example, readers know that a text is a recipe, they will expect a certain
arrangement of information (ingredients) and will know to search for a sequential
order of directions. Efficient readers also have to know what their purpose is
inreading a text, the strategies for accomplishing that purpose, and how to
retain the information.
The content validity of an assessment
procedure is largely established through the genre of a text. For example, if
learners in a program of English for tourism have been learning how to
deal with customers needing to arrange bus tours, then assessments of their
ability should include guidebooks, maps, transportation schedules, calendars, and other
relevant texts.
Microskills,
Macroskills, And Strategies For Reading
Aside from attending to genres of text,
the skills and strategies for accomplishing reading emerge as a
crucial consideration in the assessment of reading ability. The micro- and macroskills
below represent the spectrum of possibilities for objectives in the assessment of
reading comprehension, Micro-
and macroskills for reading comprehension
Microskills
1. Discriminate
among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.
2. Retain
chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory.
3. Process
writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.
4. Recognize
a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance.
5. Recognize
grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (e.g. tense, agreement,
pluralization), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.
6. Recognize
that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms.
7. Recognize
cohesive devices in written discourse and their role in signaling the relationship
between and among clauses.
Macroskills
8. Recognize
the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their significance for interpretation.
9. Recognize
the communicative functions of written texts, according to form and purpose.
10. Infer
context that is not explicit by using background knowledge.
11. From
described events, ideas, etc., infer links and connections between events, deduce causes
and effects, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new
information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.
12. Distinguish
between literal and implied meanings.
13. Detect
culturally specific references and interpret them in a context of the appropriate cultural
schemata.
14. Develop
and use a battery of reading strategies, such as scanning and skimming, detecting
discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words from context, and
activating schemata for the interpretation of texts.
The assessment of reading can imply the
assessment of a storehouse of reading strategies, as indicated in item #14.
Aside from simply testing the ultimate achievement of comprehension of a
written text, it may be important in some contexts assess one or more of a
storehouse of classic reading strategies. The brief taxono of strategies below is
a list of possible assessment criteria
Some
principal strategies for reading comprehension
1. Identify
your purpose in reading a text.
2. Apply
spelling rules and conventions for bottom-up decoding.
3. Use
lexical analysis (prefixes, roots, suffixes, etc.) to determine meaning,
4. Guess
at meaning of words, idioms, etc.) when you aren't certain.
5. Skim
the text for the gist and for main ideas.
6. Scan
the text for specific information (names, dates, key words).
7. Use
silent reading techniques for rapid processing.
8. Use
marginal notes, outlines, charts, or semantic maps for understanding and retaining
information.
9. Distinguish
between literal and implied meanings.
10. Capitalize
on discourse markers to process relationships.
Types
Of Reading
In the previous chapters we saw that
both listening and speaking could be subdivided into at least five
different types of listening and speaking performance. In the case of reading, variety of
performance is derived more from the multiplicity of types of texts (the genres listed
above) than from the variety of overt types of performance. Nevertheless, for
considering assessment procedures, several types of reading performance are typically
identified, and these will serve as organizers of various assessment tasks.
1. Perceptive.
In keeping with the set of categories specified for listening comprehension,
similar specifications are offered here, except with some differing terminology
to capture the uniqueness of reading Perceptive reading tasks involve attending to the
components of larger stretches of discourse: letters, words, punctuation, and
other graphemic symbols. Bottom-up processing is implied.
2. Selective.
This category is largely an artifact of assessment formats. In order to ascertain one's
reading recognition of lexical, grammatical, or discourse features of language within a
very short stretch of language, certain typical tasks are used: picture-cued tasks,
matching, truc/false, multiple-choice, etc. Stimuli include sentences, brief
paragraphs, and simple charts and graphs. Brief responses are intendedas well.
A combination of bottom-up and top-down processing may be used.
3. Interactive.
Included among interactive reading types are stretches of language of several
paragraphs to one page or more in which the reader must, in a psycholinguistic
sense, interact with the text. That is reading is a process of negotiating meaning; the reader
brings to the text a set of schemata for understanding it, and in take is the
product of that interaction. Typical genres that lend themselves to interactive
reading are anecdotes, short narratives and descriptions, excerpts from longer texts, questionnaires,
memos, announcements, directions, recipes, and the like. The focus of an interactive
task is to identify relevant features (lexical, symbolic, gram- matical, and discourse)
within texts of moderately short length with the objective of retaining the
information that is processed Top-down processing is typical of such tasks, although
some instances of bottom-up performance may be necessary.
4. Extensive.
Extensive reading, as discussed in this book, applies to texts ofmore than a
page, up to and including professional articles, essays, technical re- ports, short stories,
and books. (It should be noted that reading research commonly refers to
"extensive reading" as longer stretches of discourse, such as long
articles and
books that are usually read outside a classroom hour. Here that definition is massaged a little in
order to encompass any text longer than a page.) The purposes of assessment usually
are to tap into a learner's global understanding of a text, as opposed to asking
test-takers to "zoom in" on small details. Top-down processing is assumed for most
extensive tasks.
At the beginning level of reading a
second language lies a set of tasks that are to damental and basic:
recognition of alphabetic symbols, capitalized and lowercze letters, punctuation,
words, and grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Such 12 of perception are often
referred to as literacy tasks, implying that the learner is the early stages of
becoming "literate."Some learners are already literate in their native language, but in
other cases the second language may be the first langu that they have ever
learned to read. This latter context poses cognitive and so times age-related
issues that need to be considered carefully. Assessment of liter is no easy assignment,
and if you are interested in this particular challenging further reading beyond
this book is advised (Harp. 1991; Farr & Tone, 1994, Genes 1994: Cooper, 1997).
Assessment of basic reading skills may be carried out number of different
ways.
Reading
Aloud
The test-taker sees separate letters,
words, and/or short sentences and reads aloud, one by one, in the presence of an
administrator. Since the assessment
reading
comprehension, any recognizable oral approximation of the response is considered
correct.
Written
Response
The same stimuli are presented, and the
test-taker's task is to reproduce the probe in writing. Because of
the transfer across different skills here, evaluation of the testtaker's
response must be carefully treated. If an error occurs, make sure you determine
its source; what might be assumed to be a writing error, for example, may actually be a reading
error, and vice versa.
Multiple-Choice
Multiple-choice responses are not only a
matter of choosing one of four or five possible answers. Other formats, some of
which are especially useful at the low levels of reading include
same/different, circle the answer, true/false, choose the letter, and matching. Here are some
possibilities
Matching
Tasks
At this selective level of reading, the
test-taker's task is simply to respond correctly. which makes matching an
appropriate format. The most frequently appearing criterion in matching
procedures is vocabulary.
To add a communicative quality to
matching, the first numbered list is sometimes a set of sentences with blanks
in them, with a list of words to choose from:
Selected
response fill-in vocabulary task
1. At
the end of the long race, the runners were totally
2. My
parents were with my bad performance on the final exam.
3. Everyone
in the office was about the new salary raises
4. The
listening of the counselor made Christina feel well understood
Alderson (2000, p. 218) suggested
matching procedures at an even more
sophisticated
level, where test-takers have to discern pragmatic interpretations of certain signs or labels
such as "Freshly made sandwiches" and "Use before
10/23/02." Matches
for those two are "We sell food" and "This is too old,"
which are selected from
a number of other options.
Matching tasks have the advantage of
offering an alternative to traditional multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank
formats and are sometimes easier to construct than multiple-choice
items, as long as the test designer has chosen the matches carefully. Some
disadvantages do come with this framework, however. They can become more of a
puzzle-solving process than a genuine test of comprehension as test-lakers struggle
with the search for a match, possibly among 10 or 20 different items. Like
other tasks in this section, they also are contrived exercises that are endemic to academia
that will seldom be found in the real world.
Editing
Tasks
Editing for grammatical or chetorical
errors is a widely used test method for assessing linguistic competence in
reading. The TOEFL and many other tests employ this technique with the argument
that it not only focuses on grammar but also introduces a simulation of the
authentic task of editing, or discerning errors in written passages.
Its authenticity may be supported if you consider proof reading as a real-world
skill that is being tested. Here is a typical set of examples of editing
Multiple-choice
grammar editing task (Phillips, 2001, p. 219) Test-takers read:
Choose the letter of the underlined word that is not correct,
1. The
abrasively action of the wind wears away softer layers of rock.
2. There
are two way of making a gas condense: cooling it or putting it under AB pressure
3. Researchers
have discovered that the application of bright light can sometimes be uses to overcome jet
lag, C
D
The above examples, with their disparate
subject matter content are not a
authentic
as asking test-takers to edit a whole essay (see discussion belon pages 207-208). Of
course, if learners have never practiced error detection tasks, the task itself
is of some difficulty. Nevertheless, error detection has bees shown to be positively
correlated with both listening comprehension and reading comprehension
results on the TOEFL, at r = 58 and 76, respectively (TOEFL Score User
Guide, 2001). Despite some authenticity quibbles, this task
maintains
a construct validity that justifies its use,
Picture-Cued
Tasks
In the previous section we looked at
picture-cued tasks for perceptive recognition of symbols and words.
Pictures and photographs may be equally well utilized for examining ability at
the selective level. Several types of picture-cued methods are commonly used
1. Test-takers
read a sentence or passage and choose one of four pictures that is being described.
2. Test-takers
read a series of sentences or definitions, each describing a labeled part of a
picture or diagram. Their task is to identify each labeled item.
Tasks at this level,
like selective tasks, have a combination of form-focused and meaning-focused
objectives but with more emphasis on meaning. Interactive tasks may therefore imply a
little more focus on top-down processing than on bottom-up. Texts are a little longer,
from a paragraph to as much as a page or so in the case of ordinary prose. Charts,
graphs, and other graphics may be somewhat complex in their format
Cloze
Tasks
One of the most popular types of reading
assessment task is the cloze procedure. The word cloze was coined by educational
psychologists to capture the Gestalt psychological concept of
"closure," that is, the ability to fill in gaps in an incomplete image (visual,
auditory, or cognitive) and supply (from background schemata) omitted details. In written language, a
sentence with a word left out should have enough context that a reader can
close that gap with a calculated guess, using linguistic expectancies (formal
schemata), background experience (content schemata), and some strategic competence.
Based on this assumption, cloze tests were developed for native language
readers and defended as an appropriate gauge of reading ability.
Some research (Oller, 1973, 1976, 1979)
on second language acquisition vigorously defends cloze testing as an integrative
measure not only of reading ability but also mpromptu Reading Plus
Comprehension Questions If
cloze testing is the most-researched procedure for assessing reading, the tional "Read a
passage and answer some questions technique is undoubted oldest and the most
common. Virtually every proficiency test uses the forma one would rarely
consider assessing reading without some component of the 36 ment involving
impromptu reading and responding to questions.
Notice that this set of questions, based
on a 250-word passage, covers the compre-
hension
of these features:
1. main
idea (topic)
2. expressions/idioms/phrases
in context
3. inference
(implied detail)
4. grammatical
features
5. detail
(scanning for a specifically stated detail)
6. excluding
facts not written (unstared details)
7. supporting
idea(s)
8. vocabulary
in context
These specifications, and the questions
that exemplify them are not just a string of "straight"
comprehension questions that follow the thread of the passage. The questions
represent a sample of the test specifications for TOEFL reading passages, which are derived from
research on a variety of abilities good readers exhibit. Notice that many of them are
consistent with strategies of effective reading skimming for main idea, scanning for
details, guessing word meanings from context, inferencing, using discourse markers, etc.
To construct your own assessments that involve shon reading passages
followed by questions, you can begin with TOEFL-like specs as basis. Your focus in
your own classroom will determine which of these-and possibly other
specifications-you will include in your assessment procedure, how you will frame questions,
and how much weight you will give each item in scoring.
The technology of computer-based reading
comprehension tests of this kind
enables
some additional types of items. Items such as the following are typical: Computer-based TOEFL
reading comprehension item
Questions might cover the same
specifications indicated
above for the TOEFL reading, but be worded in question form. For example, in a passage on the
future of airline travel, the following questions might appear Open-ended reading
comprehension questions
1. What
do you think the main idea of this passage is?
2. What
would you infer from the passage about the future of air travel?
3. In
line 6 the word sensation is used. From the context, what do you think this word means?
4. What
two ideas did the writer suggest for increasing airline business?
5. Why
do you think the airlines have recently experienced a decline?
Do not take lightly the design of
questions. It can be difficult to make sure that they reach their
intended criterion. You will also need to develop consistent specifications for
acceptable student responses and be prepared to take the time necessary to
accomplish their evaluation. But these rather predictable disadvantages may be outweighed by the
face validity of offering students a chance to construct their own answers, and by the
washback effect of potential follow-up discussion.
Editing
(Longer Texts)
The previous section of this chapter (on
selective reading) described editing tasks, but there the
discussion was limited to a list of unrelated sentences, each presented with an error to be
detected by the test-taker. The same technique has been applied successfully to longer
passages of 200 to 300 words. Several advantages are gained in the longer format.
First, authenticity is increased. The
likelihood that students in English class- rooms will read
connected prose of a page or two is greater than the likelihood of their encountering the
contrived format of unconnected sentences. Second, the task simulates proofreading
one's own essay, where it is imperative to find and correct errors. And third, if
the test is connected to a specific curriculum (such as place ment into one of
several writing courses), the test designer can draw up specifications for a
number of grammatical and rhetorical categories that match the content of the courses. Content
validity is thereby supported, and along with it the face validity of a task in
which students are willing to invest. Imao's (2001) test introduced one error
in each numbered sentence. Test-takers followed the same procedure for marking
errors as described in the previous section. Instructions to the student
included a sample of the kind of connected prose that test-lakers would
encounter: work,
they can provide guidelines to a teacher on areas of potential focus as the writing course unfolds.
Scanning
Scanning is a strategy used by all
readers to find relevant information in a text. Assessment of scanning
is carried out by presenting test-takers with a text (prose or something in a chart or
graph format) and requiring rapid identification of relevant bits of information. Scoring
of such scanning tasks is amenable to specificity if the initial directions are specific (How much
does the dark chocolate torte cost?). Since one of the purposes of scanning is
to quickly identify important elements, timing may also be calculated into a
scoring procedure.
Ordering
Tasks
Students always enjoy the activity of
receiving little strips of paper, each with a sentence on it, and assembling
them into a story, sometimes called the strip story"technique. Variations
on this can serve as an assessment of overall global understanding of a story and of the
cohesive devices that signal the order of events or ideas. Alderson et al. (1995,
p. 53) warn, however, against assuming that there is only one logical order. They
presented these sentences for forming a little story.
All of these media presuppose the
reader's appropriate schemata for intepreting them and often are accompanied by
oral or written discourse in order to convey, clarify, question, argue, and
debate, among other linguistic functions. Virtual every language
curriculum, from rock-bottom beginning levels to high-advanced, lizes this nonverbal,
visual/symbolic dimension. It is therefore imperative that assessment
procedures include measures of comprehension of nonverbal media.
Skimming
Tasks
Skimming is the process of rapid coverage
of reading matter to determine its gist or main idea. It is a
prediction strategy used to give a reader a sense of the topic and purpose of a text, the
organization of the text, the perspective or point of view of the writer, its ease or
difficulty, and/or its usefulness to the reader. Of course skimming can apply
to texts of less than one page, so it would be wise not to confine this type of task just
to extensive texts.
Note-Taking
and Outlining
Finally, a reader's comprehension of
extensive texts may be assessed through an evaluation of a process
of note-taking and/or outlining. Because of the difficulty of controlling the
conditions and time frame for both these techniques, they rest firmly in the category of
informal assessment. Their utility is in the strategic training that learners gain in
retaining information through marginal notes that highlight key information or
organizational outlines that put supporting ideas into a visually man ageable framework. A
teacher, perhaps in one-on-one conferences with students, can use student
notes/outlines as indicators of the presence or absence of effective reading strategies, and
thereby point the learners in positive directions. In his introduction to Alderson's (2000,
p. xx) book on assessing reading, Lyle Bachman observed: "Reading, through
which we can access worlds of ideas and feelings, as well as the knowledge of
the ages and visions of the future, is at once the most extensively
researched and the most enigmatic of the so-called language skills." It's the almost
mysterious "psycholinguistic guessing game" (Goodman, 1970) of reading that poses the
enigma. We still have much to learn about how people learn to read, and especially
about how the brain accesses, stores, and recalls visually represented language.
This chapter has illustrated a number of possibilities for assessment of
reading across the continuum of skills, from basic letter/word recognition.
Assessing
Writing
Not many centuries ago, writing was a
skill that was the exclusive domain of scribes and scholars in
educational or religious institutions. Almost every aspect of everyday life for "common
people was carried out orally. Business transactions, records, legal documents, political
and military agreements--all were written by specialists whose vocation it was to
render language into the written word. Today, the ability to write has become an
indispensable skill in our global literate community. Writing skill, at least at rudimentary
levels, is a necessary condition for achieving employment in many walks of life and
is simply taken for granted in literate cultures. In the field of second
language teaching, only a half-century ago experts were saying that writing was
primarily a convention for recording speech and for rein- forcing grammatical and
lexical features of language. Now we understand the uniqueness of writing
as a skill with its own features and conventions. We also fully understand the
difficulty of learning to write "well"in any language, even in our
own native
language. Every educated child in developed countries learns the rudiments of writing in his or
her native language, but very few learn to express themselves clearly with logical,
well-developed organization that accomplishes an intended purpose.
Genres
Of Written Language
Even though this list is slightly
shorter, you
should be aware of the surprising multiplicity of options of written genres
that second
language learners need to acquire.
Genres
of writing
1. Academic
writing, papers and general
subject reports essays,
compositions academically
focused journals short-answer
test responsestechnical reports (e.g., lab reports) theses, dissertations
2. Job-related
writing, messages (e.g., phone
messages), letters/emails memos (e.g.,
interoffice) reports
(e.g., job evaluations, project reports) schedules, labels, signs advertisements,
announcements manuals
3. Personal
writing, letters, emails,
greeting cards, invitations
messages,
notes calendar
entries, shopping lists, reminders
financial
documents (e.g., checks, tax forms, loan applications) forms, questionnaires,
medical reports, immigration documents diaries, personal journals, fiction (e.g., short
stories, poetry).
Types
Of Writing Performance
Four categories of written performance
that capture the range of written production are considered here.
Each category resembles the categories defined for the other three skills, but these
categories, as always, reflect the uniqueness of the skill area.
1. Imitative.
To produce written language, the learner must attain skills in the fundamental, basic
tasks of writing letters, words, punctuation, and very brief sentences. This
category includes the ability to spell correctly and to perceive phoneme-grapheme
correspondences in the English spelling system. It is a level at which learners are
trying to master the mechanics of writing. At this stage, form is the primary if not
exclusive focus, while context and meaning are of secondary concern
2. Intensive
controlled). Beyond the fundamentals of imitative writing are skills in producing appropriate
vocabulary within a context, collocations and idioms and correct grammatical
features up to the length of a sentence. Meaning and context are of some
importance in determining correctness and appropriateness, but most assessment tasks
are more concerned with a focus on form, and are rather strictly controlled by
the test design.
3. Responsive.
Here, assessment tasks require learners to perform at a limited discourse level,
connecting sentences into a paragraph and creating a logically connected sequence
of two or three paragraphs. Tasks respond to pedagogical direstives, lists of
criteria, outlines, and other guidelines. Genres of writing include
bricnarratives and descriptions, short reports, lab reports, summaries, brief
responses to reading,
and interpretations of charts or graphs. Under specified conditions, the writer begins to
exercise some freedom of choice among alternative forms of apression of ideas.
4. Extensive.
Extensive writing implies successful management of all the processes and strategies
of writing for all purposes, up to the length of an essay term paper, a major
research project report, or even a thesis Writers focus on achiesing a purpose,
organizing and developing ideas logically, using details to supporto illustrate ideas,
demonstrating syntactic and lexical variety, and in many cases, gaging in the process
of multiple drafts to achieve a final product. Focus on grasmatical form is
limited to occasional editing or proofreading of a draft.
Micro-
And Macroskills Of Writing
We turn once again to a taxonomy of
micro- and macroskills that will assist you defining the ultimate
criterion of an assessment procedure. The earlier micros apply more
appropriately to imitative and intensive types of writing task, while macroskills are
essential for the successful mastery of responsive and extensive write Micro- and macroskills
of writing
Microskills
1. Produce
graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.
2. Produce
writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.
3. Produce
an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order patterns.
4. Use
acceptable grammatical systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns, and rules.
5. Express
a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
6. Use
cohesive devices in written discourse.
Macroskills
7. Use
the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse.
8. Appropriately
accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form and
purpose.
9. Convey
links and connections between events, and communicate such relations as main idea,
supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and
exemplification.
10. Distinguish
between literal and implied meanings when writing.
11. Correctly
convey culturally specific references in the context of the written text.
12. Develop
and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the
audience's interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with fluency in the
first drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor
feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing.
Designing
Assessment Tasks: Imitative Writing
With the recent worldwide emphasis on
teaching English at young ages, it is tempting to assume that every English
learner knows how to handwrite the Roman alphabet. Such is not the case. Many
beginning-level English learners, from young children to older
adults, need basic training in and assessment of imitative writing the rudiments of
forming letters, words, and simple sentences. We examine this level of writing first.
A number of task types are in popular
use to assess the ability to spell words cc
rectly
and to process phoneme-grapheme correspondences.
1. Spelling
tests. In a traditional, old-fashioned spelling test, the teacher ditates a
simple list of words, one word at a time, followed by the word in a sentenc repeated again, with a
pause for test-takers to write the word. Scoring emphasiz correct spelling. You
can help to control for listening errors by choosing words the students have
encountered before-words that they have spoken or heard in their class.
2. Picture-cued
tasks. Pictures are displayed with the objective of focusing on familiar words whose
spelling may be unpredictable. Items are chosen according to the objectives of the
assessment, but this format is an opportunity to present some challenging words and
word pairs: boot/book, read/reed, bit/bite, etc.
3. Multiple-choice
techniques. Presenting words and phrases in the form of 2 multiple-choice task
risks crossing over into the domain of assessing reading, but if the items have a
follow-up writing component, they can serve as formative rein- forcement of spelling
conventions. They might be more challenging with the addition of homonyms
4. Matching
phonetic symbols. If students have become familiar with the phnetic alphabet,
they could be shown phonetic symbols and asked to write the cosrectly spelled
word alphabetically. This works best with letters that do not have one-to-one
correspondence with the phonetic symbol (e.g., /æ/ and a). In the sameple below
the answers, which of course do not appear on the test sheet, are includes in brackets for your
reference.
Designing
Assessment Tasks: Intensive
(Controlled)
Writing
This next level of writing is what
second language teacher training manuals have for decades called controlled
writing. It may also be thought of as form-focusedmwriting, grammar
writing, or simply guided writing. A good deal of writing at this level is display
writing as opposed to real writing: students produce language to display their
competence in grammar, vocabulary, or sentence formation, and not necessarily to convey
meaning for an authentic purpose. The traditional grammar/vocabulary test
has plenty of display writing in it, since the response mode demonstrates only the
test-taker's ability to combine or use words correctly. No new information is passed
on from one person to the other.
Test-takers
write:
1. She
is eating. She is eating her dinner. She is holding a spoon, etc.
2. Picture
description. A somewhat more complex picture may be presented showing, say, a person
reading on a couch, a cat under a table, books and pencils on the table, chairs
around the table, a lamp next to the couch and a picture on the wall over the couch (see
Chapter 8, page 192). Test-takers are asked to describe the picture using four
of the following prepositions: on, over, under, next to, around. As long as the
prepositions are used appropriately, the criterion is considered to be met.
3. Picture
sequence description. A sequence of three to six pictures depicting a story line can provide
a suitable stimulus for written production. The pictures must be simple and
unambiguous because an open-ended task at the selective level would give test-takers too
many options. If writing the correct grammatical form of a verb is the only criterion,
then some test items might include the simple form of the verb.
Both responsive and extensive writing
tasks are the subject of some classic widely debated assessment issues that
take on a distinctly different flavor from those at the lower-end
production of writing,
1. Autbenticity.
Authenticity is a trait that is given special attention: if test takers are
being asked to perform a task, its face and content validity need to be assured in order to bring out
the best in the writer. A good deal of writing performance in academic contexts
is constrained by the pedagogical necessities of establishing the basic building blocks of
writing, we have looked at assessment techniques that address those foundations.
2. Scoring.
Scoring is the thorniest issue at these final two stages of writing With so many options
available to a learner, each evaluation by a test administrate needs to be finely
attuned not just to how the writer strings words together (the form) but also to what
the writer is saying the function of the text). The quality writing (its impact and
effectiveness) becomes as important, if not more important than all the nuts and
bolts that hold it together.
3. Time.
Yet another assessment issue surrounds the unique nature of writir it is the only skill in
which the language producer is not necessarily constrained time, which implies the
freedom to process multiple drafts before the text becom a finished product.
Like a sculptor creating an image, the writer can take an init rough conception of a
text and continue to refine it until it is deemed presentable the public eye.
Paraphrasing
One of the more difficult concepts for
second language learners to grasp is para- phrasing. The initial
step in teaching paraphrasing is to ensure that learners under- stand the importance of
paraphrasing: to say something in one's own words, to avoid plagiarizing, to
offer some variety in expression. With those possible motivations and purposes
in mind, the test designer needs to elicit a paraphrase of a sentence or
paragraph, usually not more.
Scoring
of the test-taker's response is a judgment call in which the criterion of conveying the same or
similar message is primary, with secondary evaluations of discourse, grammar, and
vocabulary Other components of analytic or holistic scales might be considered as
criteria for an evaluation. Paraphrasing
is more often a part of informal and formative assessment than of formal, summative
assessment, and therefore student responses should be viewed as opportunities for
teachers and students to gain positive washback on the art of paraphrasing.
Guided
Question and Answer
Another lower-order task in this type of
writing, which has the pedagogical benefit of guiding a learner
without dictating the form of the output, is a guided question- and-answer format in
which the test administrator poses a series of questions that essentially serve as an
outline of the emergent written text. In the writing of a narrative that the
teacher has already covered in a class discussion, the following kinds of questions might be
posed to stimulate a sequence of sentences.
Strategic
Options
Developing main and supporting ideas is
the goal for the writer attempting to create an effective text,
whether a short one-to two-paragraph one or an extensive one of several pages. A number
of strategies are commonly taught to second language writers to accomplish
their purposes. Aside from strategies of freewriting, outlining. drafting, and revising,
writers need to be aware of the task that has been demanded and to focus on the
genre of writing and the expectations of that genre.
1. Attending
to task. In responsive writing, the context is seldom completely open-ended: a task has
been defined by the teacher or test administrator, and the writer must fulfill the
criterion of the task. Even in extensive writing of longer texts, a set of directives has
been stated by the teacher or is implied by the conventions of the genre. Four types
of tasks are commonly addressed in academic writing courses compare/contrast,
problem/solution, pros/cons, and cause/effect. Depending on the genre of the text, one
or more of these task types will be needed to achieve the writer's purpose.
2. Attending
to genre. The genres of writing that were listed at the beginning of this chapter provide
some sense of the many varieties of text that may be produced by a second
language learner in a writing curriculum. Another way of looking at the strategic
options open to a writer is the extent to which both the constraints and the opportunities
of the genre are exploited.
Following are some guidelines for
assessing the initial stages (the first draft or tw of a written
composition. These guidelines are generic for self, peer, and teach responding. Each
assessor will need to modify the list according to the level of t1 learner, the context,
and the purpose in responding. Assessment
of initial stages in composing
1. Focus
your efforts primarily on meaning, main idea, and organization,
2. Comment
on the introductory paragraph.
3. Make
general comments about the clarity of the main idea and logic or appropriateness of the
organization.
4. As
a rule of thumb, ignore minor (local) grammatical and lexical errors.
5. Indicate
what appear to be major (global) errors (e.g., by underlining the text in question), but
allow the writer to make corrections.
6. Do
not rewrite questionable, ungrammatical, or awkward sentences, rather, probe with a question
about meaning.
7. Comment
on features that appear to be irrelevant to the topic.
Source:
Brown,
H. Douglas. 2003. Language Assessment
Principles and Classroom Practices (185-250). San Francisco,
California
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