Assessing Reading

Contents Reading strategies Types of reading tasks Summary Dictocomp Perceptive Selective Interactive Extensive Summary Dictocomp Strip story In foreign language learning, reading is likewise a skill that te4achers simply expect learners to acquire. 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 is the most essential skill for success in all educational contexts, remains a skill of paramount importance as we create assessments of general language ability.

Reading Strategies (1) Bottom-up processing (decoding) which employs micro-skills Discrimination of graphemes & orthographic patterns Recognition & interpretation of words, word classes, patterns, rules, etc. Cohesive devices Making use of formal schema to decode the written text Is reading natural and normal that learners should simply be exposed to written texts with no particular instruction? 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,

Reading Strategies (1) Micro-skill processing (decoding) Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory. Recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance. Recognize grammatical word classes Is reading natural and normal that learners should simply be exposed to written texts with no particular instruction? 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,

Reading Strategies (2) Top-down processing which employs macro-skills Recognition of rhetorical forms and communicative functions Using background knowledge to make inferences Scanning and skimming, guessing meaning of words from context, activating relevant schemata Secondly, top-down process, conceptually driven strategies for comprehension. Second language readers must develop appropriate content and formal schemata-background information and cultural experience0 to carry out those interpretations effectively.

Reading Strategies (2) Macro-skills processing Distinguish between literal and implied meanings. Detect culturally specific references and interpret them in a context of the appropriate cultural schemata. Develop the reading strategies – such as, scanning and skimming, guessing meaning of words from context, activating relevant schemata Secondly, top-down process, conceptually driven strategies for comprehension. Second language readers must develop appropriate content and formal schemata-background information and cultural experience0 to carry out those interpretations effectively.

Reading Strategies The reading strategies: Skim Scan Make an inference Strategic pathways to full understanding are often important factors to include in assessing elarners, 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-takers’ strategies for achieving ultimate comprehension.

Types genres of Reading Tasks Academic reading E.g. Job-related reading Personal reading textbooks, comic strips, test direction, letter/email, announcements, newspaper, Each type of 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. The genre of a text enables readers to apply certain schemata that will assist them in extracting appropriate meaning. For example: if 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.

Types genres of Reading Tasks Efficient readers Know the purpose in reading a text The strategies to accomplish the purpose How to retain the information The content validity of an assessment procedure is 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 arranage bus tours, then assessments of their ability should include guidebooks, maps, transportation schedules, calendars, and other relevant texts.d

Types of Reading Tasks Perceptive Selective Interactive Extensive In the case of reading, variety of performance is delivered more from the multiplicity of types of texts than form the variety of overt types of performance.

Types of Reading Tasks (1) Perceptive: Bottom-up processing Decoding letters, words, graphemic symbols, etc. Reading aloud, picture-cued word or sentence identification, etc. (Brown 190-193) 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. Test designer focuses on focuses on formal aspects of language (lexical, grammatical, and a few discourse features) The beginning level of reading a second language lies a set of tasks that are fundamental and basic: recognition of alphabetic symbols, capitalized and lowercases letter, punctuation, words.

Perceptive assessment tasks Reading aloud Multiple-choice – minimal pair distinction Grapheme recognition task Picture-cued items Picture-cued word identification picture-cued sentence identification Picture-cued true/false sentence identification Picture-cued matching word identification (p. 192-193) 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. The beginning level of reading a second language lies a set of tasks that are fundamental and basic: recognition of alphabetic symbols, capitalized and lowercases letter, punctuation, words.

Types of Reading Tasks (2) Selective: A combo of bottom-up and top-down processing Formal (lexical and grammatical) aspects of language Formats including multiple-choice, matching, gap-filling This category includes testing of vocabulary and grammar. Here are some of the possible tasks you can use to assess lexical and grammatical aspects of reading ability.

Selective Assessment Tasks Multiple-choice for form-focused criteria e.g. He’s not married. He’s_________ a. young b. single c. first d. a husband This category includes testing of vocabulary and grammar. Here are some of the possible tasks you can use to assess lexical and grammatical aspects of reading ability. It is easy to administer and can be scored quickly. The most straightforward multiple-choice items may have little context, but might serve as a vocabulary or grammar check.

Selective Assessment Tasks Contextualized multiple-choice vocabulary / grammar tasks 1. Oscar: Do you like champagne? Lucy: No, I can’t _________it. a. stand b. prefer c. hate A better contextualized format is to offer a modified cloze test adjusted to fit the objectives being assessed.

Selective Reading Assessment Tasks Contextualized multiple-choice cloze vocabulary task (p.196) Matching tasks Vocabulary matching tasks Selected response fill-in vocabulary task Editing tasks E.g. paper-based toefl Picture-cued tasks (p. 199) A better contextualized format is to offer a modified cloze test adjusted to fit the objectives being assessed.

Types of Reading Tasks (3) Interactive: Top-down processing (with some instances of bottom-up) More lengthy reading where the reader must interact with the text A process of negotiating meaning Both form-focused and meaning-focused (but more emphasis on meaning comprehension) Cloze, comprehension Qs, editing, short answers, scanning, ordering, info. transfer (graphics interpretation)

Interactive Reading Assessment Tasks Cloze procedure (p.202) Fixed-ratio deletion Rational deletion C-test Reading comprehension passage Short-answer tasks Open-ended reading comprehension questions Editing (longer texts) Contextualized grammar editing tasks. Ordering tasks Information Transfer (p. 211)

Types of Reading Tasks (4) Extensive: Top-down processing Global understanding of a text Skimming, summarizing and responding, note-taking and outlining

Summary Types of reading by length (short, medium, long), focus (form and meaning), and process (bottom-up vs. top-down) (see Brown 190)