CHAPTER 20 ASSESSMENT GEOFF BRINDLEY

What is assessment?
Refers to a variety of ways of collecting information on a learners language
ability or achievement. Measurement instruments, such as test, qualitative
methods of monitoring and recording students learning such as observation,
simulation or project work.
Proficiency assessment: Refers to the assessment of general language
abilities acquired by the learner independent of a course of study. Is often done
through the administration of standarised commercial language proficiency
tests.
Assessment of achievement: Aims to establish what a student has learned
in relation to a particular course or curriculum.
Formative assessment: Assessment carried out by teachers during the
learning process with the aim of using the results to improve instruction.
Summative assessment: Assessment at the end of a course, term or school,
often for purposes of providing aggregated information on programme
outcomes.
INTERPRETATION OF THE ASSESMENT
Norm referenced: Ranks learners in relation to each other: e.g a score
percentage in an examination reports a learners standing compared to to
other candidates.
Criterion referenced: Learners performance is described in relation to an
explicitly stated standard.
They two key requirements for any assessment is VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY.
VALIDITY
It is related to questions about what the test is actually assessing, e.g is the
test telling you what you want to know?.
There are three types of validity:
1. Construct validity:
the content of the test/assessment reflects
current theoretical understandings of the skills being assessed.
2. Content validity: whether it represents an adequate sample of ability
3. Criterion related validity: the results correlate with other independent
measures of ability.

4. Consequential validity: the extent to which a test or assessment

serves the purposes for which it is intended.

RELIABILITY
It is an estimate of the consistency of its marks. A realiable test is one where a
students will get the same mark if he or she takes the test, with a different
examiner.
is concerned with ascertaining to what degree scores on test or assessments
are affected by measurement error, by variation in scores caused by factors
unrelated to the ability being assessed (e.g conditions of administration, test
instructions, fatigue, guessing, etc).
The consistency of test results can be estimated in terms of TEST RETEST
RELIABILITY, where the same test is given to a group at two different points in
time or by administering two equivalent forms of the same test.
Practicability: e.g it is not excessively expensive
It stay within appropriate time constrains
It is easy to administer
It has scoring procedure
Time efficient
Authenticity: is likely to be enacted in the real world.
The dregree of correspondence of the test characteristics of a
given language test characteristics of a given language test task to the
features of the target language task.
PURPOSES OF ASSESSMENT
1. Selection : whether learners have sufficient language proficiency to be
able to undertake tertiary study
2. Certification: to provide people with a statement of their language
ability for employment purposes.
3. Accountability: to provide educational funding authorities
evidence that intended learning outcomes have been achieved.

with

4. Diagnosis: to identify strengths and weaknesses.

5. Instructional decision making: to decide what material to present
next or what to revise.

6. Motivation: to encourage learners to study harder.

Discrete item tests: Related to phoneme discrimination, grammatical
knowledge and vocabulary. For example multiple choice and large
number of items.
Integrative tests: more practical test, in which learners need to use
linguistic and contextual knowledge to reconstitute meaning of spoken
or written texts. An example is dictation or cloze.
Washback: the impact of assessment and testing on teaching and
learning.
Topical knowledge: knowledge of the world that can be mobilized in
test.
Affective schemata: emotional memories influencing the ways testtakers behave.
CHAPTER 21 EVALUATION , FRED GENESEE
What is evaluation?
Is a process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting information about
teaching and learning in order to make informed decisions that enhance
student achievement and the success of educational programmes.
Components of evaluation:
1. Articulate purposes for evaluation: Purpose of evalution is first e.g
to decide whether to continue new materials.
2. Identify and collect relevant information: Information that is
relevant to the purpose is identified and collected. Eg the teacher uses
student scores on test and his observations of performance to make
decisions.
3. Analyze and interpret information: Once collected, the information
is analyzed and interpreted: feedback from students, their employers
and teachers is interpreted impressionistically.
4. Make decisions: finally, decisions are taken: the materials are kept
or rejected. Each student is assigned to an ESL or non-ESL.
Evaluation goes beyond students achievement and language
assessment to consider all aspects of teaching and learning, and

to look at how educational decisions can be informed by the

results of alternative forms of assessment.
Classroom based evaluation is concerned with questions about:
1. Suitability of general instructional goals and objectives associated
with individual lesson or unit plans.
2. Effectiveness or instructional methods, materials and activities used
to attain instructional objectives.
3. Adequacy of professional resources required to deliver instruction.
Classroom based factors
Students needs and goals, learning styles, attitudes toward
schooling and second language, learning and interests and
motivations. There are other such as, community attitudes,
availability of resources and time outside school to complete
assignments
Instructional and other factors to consider in classroom-based
evaluation
Students needs and
Abilities
Community
Attitudes

instructional
objectives

instructional
plans

Teachers abilities
And training
Time and resources

instructional
practices

student achievement

Professional support
In the disctrict

Including students in the evaluation process as active partners serves

to:
*Make them aware of learning abjectives so they are better able to allocate
time and energy to fulfilling designated instructional objectives
*Instill a sense of ownership and responsibility for learning that can enhance
achievement

CHAPTER 8 ASSESSING READING , ALDERSON

TYPE OF TEXTS: Narrative
Descriptive
Argumentative
Ways of reading: Intensive
Extensive

Subskills: Skimming
Scanning
Interpret
Bottom up Approach: Bottom up approach: Specific to general
Top down approach: General to specific

Type of questions in reading

Type 1: Literal comprehension: the information is explicit
Type 2: questions involving reorganization or reinterpretation
Type 3: questions of inference
Type 4: questions of evaluation
Type 5: questions of personal response (awareness)
Type 6: questions concerned with how writers say what they mean (interpreting
the words)
Types of genre in reading
Academic reading:
General interests articles ( magazines, newspapers, etc)
Technical reports
Reference material (dictionaries)
Textbooks, theses
Essays, papers
Test directions
Editorials and opinion writing

Job- related reading

Messages
Letters/emails
Memos
Reports (job evaluations, project reports)
schedules, labels, signs, announcements
Forms, applications, questionnaires
Financial documents (bills, invoices )
Directories (telephone, office)
Manuals, directions
Personal reading
Newspapers and magazines
Letters, emails, greeting cards, invitations
Messages, notes, lists
Schedules (train, bus, plane, etc)
Recipes, menus, maps, calendars
Advertisements (commercials, want ads)
Novels, short stories, jokes, drama, poetry
Financial documents (checks, tax forms, loan applications)
Forms, questionnaires, medical reports, immigration documents comic strips,
cartoons.
MICROSKILLS
MACROSKILLS
Some principal strategies for reading comprehension
1. Identify your purpose in reading a text
2. Apply spelling rules and conventions for bottom up decoding
3. Use lexical analysis (prefixes, roots, suffixes, etc) to determine meaning
4. Guess at meaning (of words, idioms, etc) when you arent certain
5. Skim the text for the gist and for main ideas
6. Scan the text for specific information (names, dates key words)
7. Use silent reading techniques for rapid processing.
TYPES OF READING
1. PERCEPTIVE: Involve attending to the components of larger stretches of
discourse: letters, words, punctuation and other graphemic symbols.
Bottom up processing is implied. Text are short, focuses on the form,
bottom up is used mostly (e.g reading aloud- fluency and phonetics).

2. SELECTIVE: Is largely an artifact of assessment formats. In order to

ascertain ones reading recognition of lexical, grammatical, or discourse
features of language within a very short stretch of language, certain
typical tasks are used: picture cued tasks, matching, true-false, multiple
choice, etc. formal aspect and not dealing with the content.
Texts can be short or medium, focuses more on the form than in
meaning and bottom up and top down are equally used.
3. INTERACTIVE: the reader in a psycholinguistic sense, interact with the
text, that means the reader brings to the text a set of schemata for
understanding it. Examples are anecdotes, short narratives and
descriptions. The focus of an interactive task is to identify relevant
features (lexical, symbolic, grammatical and discourse). Texts are
medium, focuses more in the meaning than form, and top down is more
common than bottom up.
4. EXTENSIVE: Applies to texts of more than a page, up to and including
professional articles, essays, technical reports, short stories and books.
Texts are long, focuses on the meaning and Top down is used in most
extensive task.

PERCETIVE READING
1. READING ALOUD: The reader sees separate letters, words and or short
sentences and reads them aloud one by one. Any recognizable oral
approximation of the response is correct.
2. WRITTEN RESPONSE: the readers task is to reproduce the probe in
writing. (to write what he or she already read). If an error occurs, make
sure you determine its source.
3. MULTIPLE- CHOICE: there are different types
a. Minimal pair distinction
b. Grapheme recognition task
4. PICTURE CUED ITEMS: Test takers are shown a picture, along with a
written text and are given one of a number of possible tasks to perform.
a. Picture cued word identification (e.g point the word that you read
here)
b. Picture cued sentence identification: with the same picture, the
reader might read sentences and then point to the correct part of the
picture.
c. Picture cued true/false sentence identification (e.g the pencils are
under the table t/f)
d. Picture cued matching word identification: readers read the word and
writes the appropriate letter beside the word (e.g clock _____ )

e. Multiple choice picture cued word identification: test takers might see
a word or phrase and the be directed to choose one of four pictures
that is being described. To transfer from a verbal to a nonverbal
mode. (e.g rectangle and under a picture of a rectangle and other
forms)
SELECTIVE READING
1. MULTIPLE CHOICE: it is easy to administer and can be scored quickly. The
items may have little context but might serve as a vocabulary or
grammar check.
a. Multiple choice vocabulary/grammar tasks (e.g he is not married.
Hes _______ (single))
b. Contextualized multiple choice vocabulary/grammar tasks: (complete
dialog )
c. Multiple choice cloze vocabulary /grammar task: (complete a text
with the mssing words that are down in form of multiple choice)
2. MATCHING TASKS: Most is used for vocabulary
a. Vocabulary matching task: (e.g write the letter of the definition on the
right matches word on the left)
b. Selected response fill-in vocabulary task: put a sentence wuith a
missing word and under a list of words that are part of the text. The
reader has to choose which word is best to each sentence.
3. EDITING TASKS:Correct mistakes, to edit a text.
a. Multiple choice grammar editing task: (e.g choose the letter of the
underlined word that is not correct)
4. PICTURE CUED TASKS:
a. Multiple choice picture cued responde: test takers read a sentence or
passage and choose one of four pictures that is being described.
sentences are more complex at this level.
b. Diagram labeling task : test takers read a series of sentences or
definitions, each describing a labeled part of a picture or diagram. Their
task is to identify each labeled item.(una foto donde aparece una
bicicleta con sus partes y abajo en letras,diferentes oraciones
describiendo dichas partes, entonces el estudiante debe colocar la letra
en la parte correspondiente.)
5. GAP FILLING TASKS (FILL IN THE BLANK)
a. Sentence completion tasks (un dialogo donde debe completer lo que dira
el otro , de acuerdo al context o que se ha leido).

INTERACTIVE READING TASKS

1. CLOZE TASKS: The ability to fill in gaps in an imcomplete image (visual,
auditory or cognitive) and supply (from background schemata) omitted
details.
a. Cloze procedure, fixed- ratio deletion (every seventh word)(completar un texto de un essay, poniendo las palabras correctas en
los lugares en blanco.
b. Cloze procedure, rational deletion (prepositions and conjunctions)

FALTA DE READING!
FRAMEWORK FOR TEST DESIGN
TECHNIQUES FOR TESTING READING
The cloze test and gap filling tests
Close tests are typically constructed by deleting from selected texts every n-th
word and simply requiring the test taker to restore the word that has been
deleted.
Gap filling tests are different, the test constructor does not use a pseudo
random procedure to delete words, here she or he decides, rationally, which
words to delete, but tries not to leave fewer than five or six words between
gaps.
Multiple choice techniques
Are common to test students text comprehension. They allow testers to control
the range of possible answers to comprehension questions and also control
students tought processes when responding. The negative aspect is that the
may present students with possibilities they may not have thought of (tricking,
false measure of their understanding).
Matching techniques (alternative objective techniques)
Here two sets of stimuli have to be matched against each other, for example,
matching headings with paragraphs.
Ordering tasks
Candidates are given a scrambled set of words, sentences, paragraphs or texts
and they have to put them into their correct order.
Dichotomous items
Items with only two choices. Students are presented with a statement which is
related to a target text and have to indicate whether this is true or false, or
whether the text agrees or disagrees with the statement. The problem is that

students have a 50% chance of getting the answer right by guessing alone.(e.g
the text, aunder the text a set of statements, a lot of people want to
photograph Brenda a) right b)wrong c) doesnt say).
Editing tests
Consist of passages in which errors have been introduced, which the candidate
has to identify. The erroes can be in multiple choice format or open by asking
candidates to identifiy the error in a sentence and to write the correction
opposite the line.
Daddy like to be with me ___ answer likes to be with me
Or, daddy likes be with me ___ answer to be with me
The C test
The second half of every second word is deleted and the students has to
restore it.
Example: it i_ claimed th_ this tech___ : it is claimed that this technique.
The cloze elide test
Intrusive word technique. In this procedure it is introduced words to the text
instead of delete them, the students have to identify which words are the ones
introduced. Example: test are actually a very difficult to construct: test are
actually very difficult to contruct. The negative aspect is that we have to be
sure to insert words that dont belong, the second is where insert the words, it
is not good to use insertion procedures because the candidate can identify the
patron and simply count the words.
Short answer tests
Test takers are simply asked a question which requires a brief response(for
example: what is the relation between marketa and karel?. Answer: husband
and wife). The justification is that it is possible to interpret students responses
to see if they have really understood. The difference with multiple choice is that
here they explain their alternative and in the other they selected one that may
be at random or by eliminating others. The negative aspect is that is difficult to
predict all responses and interpretations of short answer questions.
The free- recall test
Students are asked to read a text, to put it to one side, and then to write down
everything they can remember from the text. (extended production response ).
Helps to provide a picture of learner processes, reveals information about how
information is restoeed and organized. Need to be in the first language
otherwise is a test of writing as well as reading. To score it , is best to count
ideas and ignore meaning relationships. The negative thing is that may be
more a test of memory than understanding.

The summary test

Students read a text and then are required to summarise the main ideas, either
of the whole text or of a part, or those ideas in the text that deal with a given
topic. Scoring the summaries may be a problem but it is best for teachers to
write own summaries and accept the main ideas that are included in the
model. If the summary can relate to real world task, the response will be easier
for students. Another problem is that students may understand the text but for
them may be difficult to put the ideas in writing, specially if they have a certain
amount of time. It is better to ask the students to write the summary in their
own language. Another solution is to put a multiple choice, showing different
summaries and the choose the appropriate one.
The gapped summary
Students read a text and then read a summary of the same text, from which
key words have been removed. Their task is to restore the missing words,
which can only be restored if students have both read and understood the main
ideas of the original text. A way to make it easier is to provide a bank of
possible words and phrases to complete the gapped summary.
Information transfer techniques
Associated with graphic tests, such as diagrams charts and tables. The
students task is to identify in the target text the required information and then
to transfer it, often in some transposed form, onto a map a table or whatever.
Problems is that may be cognitively or culturally biased. Ifthey do not know
how to make a map or a table, it would be difficult to do. Other thing is that for
students may take to much time doing the tasks because they are thinking
which word goes where and trying to undertand the tasks itself, so the result
may be poor.

MULTIMODALITY
What is multidmodal communicative competence?
Has undergone refinements regarding the specific skills and strategies
involved. Learners need specific strategies and skills in order to understand
and produce oral and written tasks. Theses strategies include ose of
appropriate language forms (grammar, syntax), pragmatics and negotiation of
meaning, which must be adequate to the context of situation. They allow us to
perceive the link between grammar and functions of language, necessary
requirements for any communication.
Multimodal communicative competence involves the knowledge and use of
language concerning the visual, gestural, audio and spatial dimensions of
communication, including computer-mediated-communication.it seem that

mcc will allow ESL/EFL learners to be better prepared for different literacy
practices In their professional and sociocultural experiences with native and
non native speakers of English.
Why is multimodality important in the teaching and learning process?
First, teachers need to understand that to communicate is to work in making
meaning, and that visual structures realize meanings as linguistic strctures do
also, and thereby point to different interpretations of experience and different
forms of social interaction.
Learners have the need to go beyond practical expertise in computer based
technologies of the school to encompass an understanding of semiotic
frameworks of analysis.
Teachers have to understand the 3 metafunctions: (mackenhorarik)
1. We use language to talk about our experience of the world
2. Use language to interact with other people
3. When we use language, we organize our messages in ways in which
indicate how they fit in with other messages around them and with the
wider context in which we are talking or wrting.
Metafunctions: KRESS
1. Representational: structures verbally and vissualy construct the nature
of events, the objects and particpantes involved.
2. Interactive: verbal and visual resources contruct the nature of
relationships among speakers/listeners, writers/readers.
3. Compositional: meaning are concerned with the distribution of the
information value or relative emphasis among elements of the text and
image.
Language in isolation to language as communication.
Now in pedagogy language has changed from being considered as isolated,
that means focus on the grammatical components form the language itself, to
know be an instrument of comminucation and find the importance to the social
interaction in the classroom, for developing a meaningful and fluent use of
English.

ASSESING LISTENING