2. ASSESSMENT OF READING COMPREHENSION ASSESSMENT VS EVALUATION Assessment provides students, parents, and teachers with valid information about a students’ progress and their attainment of the expected curriculum. Evaluation, on the other hand, occurs when a mark is assigned after the completion of a task, test, quiz, lesson or learning activity (Watson, n.d.). WHAT’S LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT? This term is related to the collection of information, and judgement of a learner’s knowledge and skills to use language (Chapelle & Brindley, 2002). ASSESSMENT OF READING COMPREHENSION “Assessing reading ability is regarded all over the English-speaking world as one of the most important ways of monitoring educational standards, and there is ongoing controversy as to the best way of assessing reading and when and how this should be done” (Harrison & Salinger, 1998, p. i)

3. TYPES OF ASSESSMENTS: WHY TEST? “(…) placement into a reading class or programme; diagnosis of a student’s reading needs or weaknessess; assessment of a student’s progress over a given (…) period of time; assessment of a student’s achivement at the end of a course or year” (Alderson, 1996, p. 214) ASSESSMENT OF READING COMPREHENSION THREE RESPONSE FORMATS ARE ESPECIALLY COMMON: Cloze (gap-filling) Question-answering (multiple-choice, open-ended, yes/no or T/F) Retellings (summarize) (Spear-Swerling, 2006)

4. ASSESSMENT OF READING COMPREHENSION REFERENCES Alderson, J. Charles. (1996). The testing of reading. In C. Nuttall, Teachin reading skills in a foreign language (Chapter 13, pp. 212-228). Oxford: Heinemann. Chapelle, C. A. & Brindley, G. (2002). Assessment. In N. Schmitt (Ed.), An introduction to applied linguistics (Chapter 15, pp. 267-288). London: Arnold Publishers. Harrison, C. & Salinger, T. (Eds.). (1998). Assessing reading 1:theory and practice, International perspectives on reading assessment. New York: Routledge. Spear-Swerling, L. (2006). Assessment of reading comprehension. [WWW page]. URL http://www.ldonline.org/spearswerling/Assessment_of_Reading_Comprehension Watson, S. (n.d.) Assessment, evaluation and final marks. [WWW page]. URL http://specialed.about.com/od/assessment/a/AandE.htm