Chapter 3: ESL (ELL) Assessment Assessing Academic Reading

Academic Reading We define academic reading as the content-area reading activities occurring in classes such as science, math or social studies. Texts are conceptually dense and grammatically complex. Probably the most challenging aspect is that students are supposed to learn from these texts to learn enough to perform well on classroom and high-stakes tests. Ongoing authentic formative assessments that integrate with classroom instructional practices is essential.

Content Reading Assessment Content textbooks vary in format according to the academic discipline involved. Social studies texts, for instance, contain many such items as illustrations, maps, and timelines. These texts differ from science texts, which contain graphs, bar charts, and tables. Students must be able to "read" these special content features. If not, they will be unsuccessful even if they understand the written text.

Content Reading Skills find the main idea of large sections of discourse differentiate between fact and opinion locate topic sentences make inferences about content critically evaluate content determine the accuracy of information use a table of contents, index and appendices read and interpret tables, graphs, charts, maps, cartoons, diagrams, pictures etc. read and understand expository material read and understand argument adjust reading rate relative to purpose of reading and difficulty of material scan for specific information skim for important ideas learn new material from text navigate online texts among many others…

Content Reading Assessment The first step is to assess carefully the text students are required to read. Such a process involves a review of the content skills listed above. The question is, which skills are required by a particular text? Are students required to read and learn from graphs? Are they asked to remember details? Does the author expect them to extract the "main idea"? Are they expected to be able to use a glossary?

Content Reading Assessment Leaf through the text tallying features on a chart like the Content Reading Skills List. It reveals the skills required by the text. Once the text has been reviewed, the next task is to produce an assessment. The purpose of the assessment is to determine students' needs and abilities in reference to a particular text.

Content Reading Assessment In the portion of a class record that follows, students were tested on these content features found in, a social-studies text: 1.table of contents 2.glossary 3.find main idea 4.read maps 5.follow directions 6.follow a sequence of cause and effect statements 7.read and interpret pie charts and bar graphs 8.read and understand "flow" maps The following is a portion of the class record (Figure 3.6). The numbers at the top refer to the skills in the list just given.

Content Reading Assessment

The class record allows the teacher to isolate individuals needing skills development and it also identifies instructional groups. Only Duk Sue has trouble with glossaries and the table of contents. He can be taught individually to use these content features. Jose, Mohammed, Suki, and Duk Sue all need to learn how to find the "main idea" in the text. They can be assembled as a group for instruction.

Administration It is explained to the class that the assessment is designed to find out what skills they know and don't know that are important in reading the text. It should be stressed that this is not a test in the usual sense of the word, since students will not receive a grade. The text should be available as they read. If absolute recall is expected, students should answer questions without the text after they have read the selections. Otherwise, they should use their texts during the assessment.

Scoring This is an informal test and should not be used to establish grade levels. The following are rough guidelines, requiring a judgment about the appropriateness of the text for individual students. – 90% +--the student is able to function independently with the content features – 65-90%--the student needs instruction in dealing with content features – 65% and less--if the student's cloze score is instructional or frustration, this text may be beyond his capacity to read and comprehend. Such a content reading assessment helps to judge whether students will be able to read and learn from a particular text and is relatively easy to construct. One can produce a "class assessment table" that aids in grouping students for skills instruction. In this case, the identified content skills are coded at the top of a grid, with students' names down the side.

Think-aloud Technique in which students verbalize their thoughts as they read to reveal the strategies they are using to understand a text. Allows the teacher to “make thinking ‘public’ so that students are privy to how a proficient reader contends with problem situations. Helps students engage in deep processing of text. It forces them to think. A checklist or anecdotal records can be used to take notes on each student’s strengths and needs as they think aloud.

Dialogue Journals Written conversation between a teacher and a student over a certain period. Students write about what they want and the teacher responds. Teacher is a participant in an ongoing, written conversation with the student, rather than an evaluator who corrects or comments on the student's writing Students are encouraged to draw or write. Interactive dialogue journals are an informative assessment tool for ESL students.

Readability Formulas Several features have become particularly important in readability formulas – number of syllables, number of sentences in selected samples, and number of uncommon words in selected samples. The selection of formula criteria has been greatly constrained. Many elements felt to be good indicators of difficulty were omitted, such as figures of speech, abstract vocabulary, and all factors related to a reader's interest in the content. Only features of style, items reliably quantified, have found their way into readability formulas. This is particularly unfortunate for ESL teachers and students because the formulas ignore the more important variables of interest and content.

Readability Formulas The standard readability instrument that is simplest to use and receives the most critical attention is the Fry readability assessment. The Fry continues in the new millennium to be the most widely used measure of readability. Its wide use is most likely a result of its simplicity. Fry uses a standard approach, one based on an operational definition of readability focusing on syllables and sentences. Readability formulas have been applied to reading texts for so many years that reading texts now reflect the features of the formulas. Readability measures should be thought of as extremely rough indications of level of difficulty, and no more.

Readability Formulas One common impediment to the wider use of readability formulas by teachers has been the cumbersome calculations that are involved in using the measures. There is little need to use readability formulas or graphs because many word processing software programs come with readability tools built in. For example, the readability feature of Microsoft Word can be accessed by following the procedures explained in the following link Alternatively, a number of easy-to-use and free readability tools (such as the one at can be found online.

Conclusion We have provided a short synopsis of the central aims of and key ideas in literacy assessment. We also reviewed a number of the common types of classroom measures that are available to English language teachers. Assessments were included for elementary level English language learners, secondary students as well as for post-secondary level readers.

Explorations If possible, discuss these with a partner, How important do you think the results of standardized tests are to your students’ lives? What can be done to mitigate the harmful effects of these tests? What can be done to enhance the positive aspects of these tests? Why do you think it might be important for classroom teachers to be aware of as wide of a variety of assessment tools as possible? How important do you think it is for classroom teachers to be knowledgeable about technical aspects of formal test design? Why do you think so? What kinds of things would you like do to further develop your own professional assessment knowledge?