ASSESSING STUDENTS’
READING SKILL
(English
for Occupational Purposes)
By.Zalzulifa
A.
Types of Reading
English skills have four main
skills that students need a lot to increase their ability in English. In the
case of reading, variety of performance is derived more from the multiplicity
of types of texts than from the variety of overt types of performance.
Nevertheless, for considering assessment procedures, several types of reading
performance are typically identified, and these will serve as organizers of
various assessments tasks.
There are four types of
reading:
1. Perspective
Perspective
reading tasks involve attending to the components of larger stretches of
discourse: letters, words, punctuation, and other graphic symbols. Bottom-up
processing is implied.
2.
Selective
This
category is largely an artifact of assessment formats. In order to ascertain
one’s 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. a
combination of bottom-up and up-down processing may be used.
3.
Interactive
Reading
is a process negotiating meaning; the reader brings to the texts set of
schemata for understanding it, and in take is the product of that interaction.
Typical genres that lend themselves to interactive reading are anecdotes, short
narratives and description, excerpts from longer texts, questionnaires, memos,
announcements, directions, recipes, and the like. The focus of a interactive
task is to identify relevant features (lexical, symbolic, grammatical, and
discourse) within texts of moderately short length with the objective of
retaining the information that is processed. Top-down processing is typical of
such task, although some instances of bottom-up performance may be necessary.
4.
Extensive
Extensive
reading, as discussed in this book, applies to texts of more than a page, up to
and including professional articles, essays, technical reports, short stories,
and books. The purposes of assessment usually are to tap into a learner’s
global understanding of a text, as opposed to asking test-takers to “zoom in”
in small details. Top-down processing is assumed for most extensive tasks.
B.
Designing Assessment Tasks
1.
Designing Assessment Tasks:
Perspective Reading
a.
Reading Aloud
The
test-taker sees separate letters, words, and/or short sentences and reads them aloud,
one by one, in the presence of an administrator. Since the assessment is of
reading comprehension, any recognizable oral approximation of the target
response is considered correct.
b.
Multiple-choice
Multiple-choice
responses are not only matter of choosing one of four or five possible answer.
Other formats, some which especially useful at the low levels of reading
include same/different, circle the answer, true/false, choose the letter, and
matching.
Example:
|
Minimal
Pair Distinction
(The
test-takers read) Circle “S” for the same or “D” for different.
1.
Bad Bat S D
2.
Too To S D
3.
Seat Sit S D
4.
Plain Plane S D
|
c.
Picture-cued Items
Test-takers
are shown a picture or sentence along with a written and are given one of a
number of possible tasks to perform. Reader was shown a picture and the reader
will read a question.
Example:
|
Picture-cued
true/false sentence identification.
Test-takers
read: (for the example picture based on p.192)
1.
The
pencil are under the table T F
2.
The
cat is on the table T F
3.
The
picture is over the couch T F
|
2.
Designing Assessment Tasks:
Selective Reading
a.
Multiple-choice (for
form-focused criteria)
By
far the most popular method of testing a reading knowledge of vocabulary and
grammar is the multiple-choice format, mainly for reason of practicality: it is
easy to administer and van be scored quickly. The most straightforward
multiple-choice items may have little context, but might serve as a vocabulary
or grammar check.
Example:
|
Multiple-choice
vocabulary/grammar tasks
1.
He’s
not married. He’s _________
a. Young
b. Single
c. First
d. A husband
2.
If
there’s no doorbell, please _________on the door.
a. Kneel
b. Type
c. Knock
d. Shout
3.
The
mouse is _________the bed.
a. Under
b. Around
c. Between
d. Among
|
There are a few types of
multiple-choice for form-focused criteria such as contextualized
multiple-choice vocabulary/grammar tasks, multiple-choice cloze
vocabulary/grammar tasks and so on.
b.
Matching Tasks
At
this selective level reading, the test-takers task is simply to respond
correctly, which makes matching an appropriate format. The most frequently
appearing criterion in matching procedures is vocabulary. Following is a
typical format:
b.1. vocabulary matching task
Write
in the letter of the definition on the right that matches the word on the left.
_______________
1. Exhausted a.
unhappy
_______________
2. Disappointed b.
understanding of others
_______________
3. Enthusiastic c. tired
_______________
4. Empathetic d.
excited
And
so on.
b.2.
Selected response fill-in vocabulary task.
1. At the end of the long race,
the runners were totally ________.
2. My parents were_________with
my bad performance on the final exam.
3. Everyone in the office was
________about the new salary raises.
4. The__________listening of
the counselor made Christina feel well understood.
Choose from among the
following:
Disappointed
Exhausted enthusiastic Empathetic.
3.
Designing Assessment Tasks:
Interactive Reading
a.
Impromptu Reading Plus
Comprehension Question
In this example, we can see in the TOEFL test.
There is a short article that reader should read to searching the answer then.
The short article has relation with the question below the text.
b.
Short-answer Tasks
Example:
Open-ended reading comprehension question.
|
1. What do you think the main
idea of this passage is?
2. What would you infer from the
passage about future of air travel?
3. In line 6 the word sensation
is used. From the context, what do you think this word means?
4. What two ideas did the writer
suggest for increasing airline business?
5. Why do you think the airlines
have recently experienced a decline?
|
4. Designing
Assessment Tasks: Extensive Reading
a.
Skimming Tasks
Assessment
of skimming strategies is usually straightforward: the test-taker skims a text
and answer questions such as the following:
Example:
|
What is the main idea of this
text?
What is the author’s purpose
in writing the text?
What kind of writing is this
(newspaper article, manual, novel,
etc.)?
What type of writing is this
(expository, technical, narrative, etc.)?
So on.
|
b.
Summarizing and Responding
b.1. Direction
for summarizing
Write a summary of the text.
Your summary should be about one paragraph in length (100-150) and should
include your understanding of the main idea and supporting ideas.
Criteria for assessing a summary
1. Expresses accurately the main
idea and supporting ideas.
2. Is written the student’s own
words; occasional vocabulary from the original text is acceptable.
3. Is logically organized.
4. Displays facility in the use of
language to clearly express ideas in the text.
b.2. Direction
for responding to reading
In the article “Poisoning the
Air We Breathe,” the author suggests that a global dependence of fossil fuels
will eventually make air in large cities toxic. Write an essay in which you
agree or disagree with the author’s thesis. Support your opinion with
information from the article and from your own experience.
C.
Summary
In assessing student reading, it is attached with
vocabulary and grammar as the contribution on it to find out students ability
in another skills of English. Types of reading are perspective, selective,
interactive and extensive. All are to appropriate with students’ needs and the
teacher’s expectation on overcoming a certain material.
ASSIGNMENTS
References
Brown, H. Douglas. (2004). Language Assessment: Principle and Classroom
Practices. Longman, San Francisco State University.
Imao, Yasuhiro. (2001). Validating a new ESL placement test as SFSU.
Unpublished master’s thesis, Department of English, San Francisco State
University.
Philips,
Deborah. (2001). Longman Introductory
Course for the TOEFL Test. White Plains, NY: Pearson education.
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