Language assesment meeting 14

CHAPTER 8 

ASSESSING READING 

Is readffig 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 the perception Clf a handful of letters ipto meaningful chunks of iruormation? Not necissarlly. For Learners of English, two primary es 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.

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 specifications for assessments of reading ability. 

1. Academic reading 

2. Job-related reading 

3. Personal reading 

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. 

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.

Macroskills 

1.Recognize the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their significance for  interpretation. 

2.Recognize the communicative functions of written texts, according to form and purpose.  

3.Infercontext that is not explicit by using background knowledge.

 TYPES OF READING

1. Perceptive Reading

2. Selective Reading

3. Interactive Reading

4.Extensive Reading

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: PERCEPTIVE READING

Reading Aloud 

  The test-taker sees separate letters, words, and/or short sentences and reads them aloud, one by one, in the presence of an administrator. Since the assessment is of reading comprehension, any recognizable oral approximation of the targeresponse 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 ofreading, include same/different, circle the answer, true/false, choose the letter, and matching. Here are possibilities. 

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: SELECTIVE READING 

   Just above the rudimentary skill level of perception of letters and words is a category in which the test designer focuses on formal aspects oflanguage (lexical, grammatical, and a few discourse features). This category includes what many incorrectly think of as testing "vocabulary and grammar."

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: INTERACTIVE READING 

Tasks at this level, like selective tasks, have a combination of orm focused and Learning{ocused objectives but with more emphasis on meaning. Inte.ractive taks . may therefore imply a little more focus on top-down processing than on bottQm-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. 

1.Cloze Tasks 

2.  Tasks tu Reading Plus Comprehension Questions 

3. Short-Answer Tasks 

4. Editing (Longer Texts) 

5. Scanning

6. Ordering taks

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: EXTENSIVE READING 

Extensive reading involves somewhat longer texts than we have been dealing with up to this point. Journal articles, technical reports, longer essays, short stories, and books fall into this category. The reason for placing such reading into a separate category is that reading of this type of discourse almost always involves a focus on meaning using mostly top-down processing, with only occasional use of a targeted bottom-up strategy. Also, because of the extent of such reading, formal assessment is unlikely to be contained within the time constraints of a typical formal testing framework, whi,ch presents a unique challenge for assessment purposes. 

Reference

Alderson, J. Charles. (2000). Assessing reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University ·Press. 

Read,]ohn. (2000). Assessing vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

CHAPTER 9

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. 

GENRES OF WRITI'EN LANGUAGE 

  Chapter 8 discussion of assessment of reading listed more than 50 written language genres. The same classification scheme is reformulated here to include the most common genres that a second language writer might produce, within and beyond the requirements of a curriculum. 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

2. Job-related writing 

3. Personal writing 

TYPES OF WRITING PERFORMANCE 

Four categories ofwritten performance that capture the range ofwritten production are considered here. Each category resembles the categories defmed for the other  three skills, but these categories, as always, reflect the uniqueness of the skill area. 

1. Imit.ative. To produce written language, the learner must attain skills in the funqamental, 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. 

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. Meanipgimd. context are of some importance in determining correctness and appropriateness, but most assessment tasks are more 'concerned with a focus on form, and lare 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 directives, lists of criteria, outlines, and other guidelines

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, a term paper, a major research project report, or even a thesis. 

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. 

Macroskills 

1.  Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse. 

2. Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts  according to form and purpose. 

3. Convey links and connections between events, and communicate such  relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. 

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 offorming letters, words, and simple sentences.We examine this level of writing fIrst. 

1. Tasks in [Hand] Writing Letters, Words, and Punctuation 

2. Spelling Tasks and Detecting Phoneme Grapheme Correspondences 

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: INTENSIVE (CONTROLLED) WRITING 

This next level ofwriting is what second language teacher training n1anuals have for decades called controlled writing. It may also be thought of as form-focused writing, 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.

ISSUES IN ASSESSING RESPONSIVE AND EXTENSIVE WRITING 

    Responsive writing creates the opportunity :tor test-takers to offer an array of 'possible creative responses within a pedagogic  or assessment framework: test-takers are "responding" to a prompt or assignment. Freed from the strict control of intensive writing, learners can exercise a number of options in choosing vocabulary, grammar, and discourse, but with some constraints and conditions.

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKSt RESPONSIVE  AND EXTENSIVE WRITING 

In this section we consider both responsive and extensive writing tasks. They will be regarded here as a continuum of possibilities ranging from lower-end tasks whose complexity exceeds those in the previous category of intensive or controlled writing, through more open-ended tasks such as writing short reports, essays, summaries, and responses. up to texts of several pages or more. 

1.paraphrasing 

2. Guided Question and Answer 

3. Paragraph Construction Tasks 

4. Strategic Options 

TEST OF WRITTEN ENGLISH (TWE) 

  

     One of a number of internationally available standardized tests of writing ability is the Test Written English (TWE). Established in 1986, the has gained a reputation as awell-respected measure of written English, and a number of research articles support its validity (Frase et al., 1999; Hale et al., 1996; Longford, 1996; Myford et al., 1996).

SCORING METHODS FOR RESPONSIVE AND EXTENSIVE WRITING 

   At responsive and extensive levels of writing, three major approaches to scoring writing performance are commonly used by test designers: holistic, primary trait, and analyticaL In the first method, a single score is assigned to an essay, which represents a reader's general overall assessment. Primary trait scoring is a variation of the holistic method in that the achievement of the primary purpose, or trait, of an essay is the only factor rated. Analytical scoring breaks a test-taker's written text down into a number of subcategories (organization, grammar, etc.) 

1. Holistic Scoring 

2. Primary Trait Scoring 

3. Analytic Scoring 

BEYOND SCORING: RESPONDING TO EXTENSIVE WRITING 

     Formal testing carries with it the burden of designing a practical and reliable instrument that assesses its intended criterion accurately. To accomplish that mission, designers of writing t~sts are charged with the task of providing as "objective" a scoring procedure as possible, and one that in many cases can be easily interpreted by agents beyond the learner. 

Reference

Weigle, Sara Cushing. (2002). Assessing writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University  Press. 

Raimes, Ann. (1998). Teaching writing. Annual Review ofApplied Linguistics, 18, pp.142-167.