READING: ASSESSMENT AND TECHNIQUES Prepared by Marina Solnyshkina and Olga Safonkina

WHY DO WE READ? WHAT DOES READING INVOLVE? TASK DEVELOPMENT ISSUES

Overview Why do we read? What does reading involve? Task development issues

Why do we read? For survival: depends on the day-to-day needs of the reader and often involves an immediate response to a situation. For learning: used in the classroom and is goal orientated. For pleasure: is something that does not have to be done. For assessment: to check the validity of something.

Why we read (and what we read) has an important influence on HOW we read. Reading is goal-driven: the goal of reading affects the process of reading. Why do we read?

Reading as activity is “…an enjoyable, intense, private activity, from which much pleasure can be derived, and in which one can become totally absorbed” (Alderson, 2000:28) is “the activity of reconstructing the messages that reside in printed text” (Carroll 1964)

Input Word Recognition Lexical access and syntactic parsing Propositional meaning Inferencing Mental representation Reading as process

The central ideas behind reading: the idea of meaning; the transfer of meaning from one mind to another; the transfer of a message from writer to reader; how we get meaning by reading; how the reader, the writer and the text all contribute to the process. (Nuttall, 1996)

What does reading involve? The type of reading varies according to a number of factors: purpose for reading (pleasure vs work vs survival); main ideas comprehension (global) vs. identification of specific information (local); our level of reading ability (different approaches); the difficulty level of grammar and syntax and vocabulary; the text topic (our familiarity with the topic - regardless of language ability); the type of text we are engaged with (eye movements are different and processing is different when we read narrative rather than argumentative texts).

eye movement – linear fashion vs. zigzagging through a text; different levels of coverage – grazing vs. detailed reading; the working memory keeps new information active 1-2 seconds while it carries out the appropriate process; level of fluency; automatic vs. controlled reading. What does reading involve?

fluent reading comprehension involves automatic word recognition; fluent L1 readers can recognize almost all the words they encounter (98 – 100%); 4-5 words per seconds; a fluent reader manages the following at the same time: - rapid recognition of words; - analysis of the structure of sentences; - building up a main idea model of text comprehension; - monitoring what has been comprehended; - calling in appropriate schemata from long-term memory. reading speed. Fluency:

What does reading involve? Controlled vs. automatic processing: “…automatic processing requires little/no attention and as such is less likely to interfere with other processes at work; controlled processes require attention and it is difficult to deal with more than one source of info at a time” (Nagle, S. J., & Sanders, S. L. (1986). Comprehension theory and second language pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 20(1), 9-26.) Automatic vs. controlled reading: when something is new, a learner pays it conscious attention, therefore processing is slow; as the input becomes more and more familiar, processing becomes faster and eventually automatic; processing periodically breaks down causing the reader to have to re- read, employ guessing strategic etc.

Recently, there has been a move towards a more interactive, hermeneutic approach, one that assumes a degree of bidirectionality in these processes (Hudson, 1998). Reading is an interactive process (a conversation between writer/reader, even though the writer is not present) and for it to occur two processes are necessary, top-down to predict the meaning and bottom-up to check it. What does reading involve?

Bottom-up processes: the reader is operating from the visual data in the text = “information processing” (with a focus on the processing of more micro-level constituents of texts – letter, words, phrases, sentences etc.); Top-down processes: readers call upon their background knowledge and /or use contextual information = “analysis-by-synthesis” (with a focus more on macro- level constituents – genre, text structure, as well as the role of background schematic knowledge etc.). What does reading involve?

Comprehension through decoding (word-level) and focusing on vocabulary or grammar. For example: identifying the sound/symbol correspondence in English, and its varieties; recognizing “sight words” - common words that are read quickly and easily; recognizing what part of speech a word functions as and the systems of tense, agreement, and pluralization; recognizing cohesive devices and their function in signaling relationships in texts. How can we assess these skills? The bottom-up skills

Comprehension through using prior content knowledge / knowledge of the genre (textual schemata) / using knowledge of language. For example: recognizing rhetorical conventions of writing; recognizing the function of types of writing; inferring context and connections between ideas from writing; distinguishing between literal and implied meanings; recognizing and interpreting culturally specific references in texts; using reading skills (skimming, scanning, guessing meaning from context) to help in the interpretation of texts. How can we assess these skills? The top-down skills

What does reading involve? TYPE OF READING Creating a text level structure Construct an organized representation of the text Text structure knowledge Genre Rhetorical tasks Careful reading Local Understand sentence Global Comprehend main ideas comprehend overall text comprehend overall texts Building a mental model Integrating new information Enriching the proposition Expeditious reading Local Scan/search for specifics Global Skim for gist Search for main ideas and important details Inferencing General knowledge of the world Topic knowledge Establishing propositional meaning At clause and sentence level Parsing Syntactic knowledge Lexical access Word recognition Lexicon: Lemma Meaning/word class Form Orthography/phonology/morphology Visual input

WHAT MAKES READING EASY OR DIFFICULT?

What makes reading difficult? Grammar and syntax Vocabulary Topic Background knowledge The length of text

Text requirements Three main criteria when choosing texts for tests to be used in the classroom: suitability of content exploitability readability.

Suitability of content The reading material should be interesting for students and relevant to their needs and it should motivate: Does the text interest the student? Is it relevant to the student’s needs? Does it represent the type of material that the student will use outside of the classroom?

Exploitability How the text can be used to develop the students’ competence as readers (can be exploited for teaching purposes to be useful in the classroom): Can the text be exploited for teaching purposes? For what purpose should the text be exploited? What skills/strategies can be developed by exploiting the text?

Readability Used to describe the combination of structural and lexical difficulty of a text, as well as referring to the amount of new vocabulary and any new grammatical forms present. It is important to assess the right level for the right students.

Factors to measure readability: speed of perception; perceptibility at a distance; perceptibility in peripheral vision; visibility; the reflex blink technique; rate of work (e.g. speed of reading); eye movement; fatigue in reading. Readability

Text requirements (Cont.) Authentic material: “…real-life texts, not written for pedagogic purposes” (Wallace 1992:145) “…materials that have been produced to fulfill some social purpose in the language community.” (Peacock (1997), in contrast to non- authentic texts that are especially designed for language learning purposes. Texts written for native speakers and contain “real” language. Topics within students’ experience, but not too familiar. Topics not biased or upsetting for any student. No more than 5%-10% unknown words for good level of comprehension.

READING AT DIFFERENT ABILITY LEVELS

CEFR Levels: A1

CEFR Levels: B1

CEFR Levels: C1 What types of text I understand Wide range of long, complex texts from social, professional or academic life, Complex instructions on a new unfamiliar machine or procedure outside my area. What I understand Identify fine points of detail including attitudes and opinions which are not explicitly stated. Understand in detail complex texts, including fine points of detail, attitudes and opinions. Conditions and limitations Understanding of details of complex texts usually only if difficult sections are re-read. Occasional use of dictionary.

TESTING READING AT DIFFERENT LEVELS Khalifa and Weir (2009)

32 The cognitive demands imposed by relative text complexity at each stage

33 Types of reading tested at levels A2 to C2

34 Text length

35

1. Choose a text: it can be any genre that is relevant to your students; the length and difficulty will be determined by the level of the students’ language proficiency. 2. Choose a task that students can complete after reading the text and that matches a realistic purpose for reading the text. Steps in reading assessment

Test construction: what do we want to test? 3. Decide the different types of reading to assess: skimming, scanning, or intensive reading. 4. Decide the types of meaning: grammatical (syntax), informational, discourse, or pragmatic (meaning from the writer’s tone). 5. Define the types of comprehension required: recognition, identification, analysis, interpretation, inference, synthesis, or evaluation. This is the most common way to assess reading. Steps in reading assessment

Level of engagement GLOBAL Larger textual units (e.g. a series of paragraphs, or a whole text) LOCAL Sections of a text (e.g. single sentences, or groups of sentences) This refers to how much of a text (or texts) a reader is required to engage with in the performing of a prescribed task.

Type of engagement CAREFUL Understanding the text - Explicitly stated main idea(s) and / or distinguishing that from supporting details - Locating, identifying, understanding and comparing facts, opinions, definitions (this includes search reading strategies) - Logical organisation of the text, e.g. understanding relationships among ideas in a text (problem – solution, cause – effect, temporal sequence, etc.) -Cohesive relationships (reference, ellipsis, substitution, conjunction, lexical cohesion) - Making propositional inferences (deducing information that is not explicitly stated from information that is explicitly stated) EXPEDITIOUS Skimming / reading for gist - Identifying text type - Identifying text topic - Identifying text purpose Scanning / reading for detail - Finding specific details (e.g. names, figures, dates, any other surface-level information)

Macro skills: reading quickly to skim for gist, scan for detail; establish general organization; reading thoroughly for main ideas, supporting details, argument, purpose, relationship of paragraphs, fact vs. opinion, etc; information transfer from nonlinear texts. Assessment strategies Micro skills: understanding at the sentence level - syntax, vocabulary, cohesive markers; understanding at inter- sentence level - reference, discourse markers; understanding components of nonlinear texts - labels, captions, symbols. Skills to assess

As reading is a receptive skill, it is difficult to assess in isolation, without using other skills. It is important to recognize when other skills, such as writing, are also being assessed with reading: For example, if a student reads a text and then writes a summary, the skills of reading and writing are utilized and therefore assessed. Scoring can either: focus only on the reading and only assess the content of the response, not the correctness of the writing, or focus on both reading and writing, calling this an integrated assessment. Integrated nature of reading

Comprehension questions: Multiple-choice questions are the most practical but it is difficult to write these types of questions reliably. Short answer questions are easier to write but also assess students’ writing ability and can be more difficult to score. Summary writing: Students can choose the best summary of the reading from 3 or 4 options. This only assesses their reading skill. Students can write a summary, which also assesses their writing ability (and writing summaries is hard!). Tasks for reading assessment

True/False Statements The number of the line giving supporting evidence. Matching Words with their explanations, summarising sentences with passages. Tasks for reading assessment

Metacognitive judgments: Students determine which retelling is appropriate for different audiences. This helps assess their ability to read tone and register of a text. This is a very difficult skill! Question selection or writing: Students choose questions that will help a peer understand the important ideas in the text. Students write questions that will help a peer understand the important ideas in the text. This also assesses the students’ writing ability. Tasks for reading assessment