other
ASSESSING READING
Even
as we are bombarded with an unending supply of visual and auditory media, the
written word continues in its function to convey information, to amuse and
entertain us, to codify our social, economic, and legal conventions, and to
fulfill a host of other functions. In literate societies, most
`"normal" children learn to read by the age of five or six. and some
event earlier. With the exception of a small number of people with learning
disabilities, reading is a skill that is taken for granted.
In
foreign language learning, reading is likewise skill that teachers a simply
expect learners to acquire. Basic, beginning-level textbooks in a foreign
language presuppose student's reading ability if only because it's a book that
is the medium. 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,
arguably the most essential skill for success in all educational contexts,
remains skill of paramount importance as
we create assessment of general language ability. Is reading so natural and
normal that learners should simply be exposed to written texts with no
particular instruction? Will they just absorb the skills necessary to convert
their perception of a handful of letters into meaningful chunks of information?
No: necessarily. 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, as
well as top-down, conceptually driven strategies for
comprehension. Second, as a part o that top-down approach, second language
readers must develop appropriate content and formal schemata-background
information and cultural experience-to carry out those interpretations
effectively.
The
assessment of reading ability does not end wit the measurement of
comprehension. Strategic pathways to full understanding are often important
factors to include in assessing learners, 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-taker's strategies for achieving ultimate comprehension. For
example, an academic technical report may be comprehensible to a student at the
sentence level, but if the learner has not exercised certain strategies for
noting the discourse conventions of that genre, misunderstanding may occur.
As
we consider a number of different types or genres of written texts the
components of reading ability, and specific tasks that are commonly used in the
assessment of reading, let's not forget the unobservable nature of reading.
Like listening, one cannot see the process of reading, nor can one observe a
specific product of reading. Other that observing a reader's eye movements and
page turning, there is no technology that enables us to "see"
sequences of graphic symbols traveling from the pages of a book into compartments
of the brain (in a possible bottom-up process). Even more outlandish is the
notion, that one might be able to watch information from the brain make its way
down onto the page (in typical to-down strategies). F inner, once something is
read-information from the written text is stored-no technology allows us to empirically
measure exactly what is lodged in the brain. All assessment of reading must be
carried out by inference.
(a) TYPES (GENRES) OF READING
Each of type or genre
of written text has it own set of governing rules and conventions. A reader
must be able to anticipate those conventions in order to process meaning
efficiently. With an extraordinary number of genres presenting any literate
culture, the reader's ability to process texts must be very sophisticated. Consider the following
abridged list of common genres, which ultimately form part of the
specifications fir assessment of reading ability.
Genres of reading
1. Academic reading
2. Job-related
reading
3. Personal reading
See how overwhelming
it is to learn to read in a foreign language! The genre of a text enables
readers to apply certain schemata that will assist them in extracting
appropriate meaning. If, for example, readers know that a text is a recipe,
they will expect a certain arrangement of information (ingredients) and will
know to search for a sequences order of directions. Efficient readers also have
to know what their purpose is in reading a text, the strategies for accomplishing
that purpose, and how to retain the information.
The context validity
of an assessment procedure is largely 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 arrange bus tours, then assessment of
their ability should include guidebooks, maps, transportation schedules, calendars,
and other relevant texts.
(b)
MICRO SHILLS, MACROSKILLS, AND STRATEGIES FOR READING
Aside from attending
to genre of text, the skills and strategies for accomplishing reading emerge as
a crucial consideration in the assessment of reading ability. The micro and
microskills below represent the spectrum of possibilities for objectives in the
assessment of reading comprehension.
Micro and macroskills
for reading comprehension
Microskills
1. Discriminate among the distinctive graphemes
and orthographic patterns of English.
2.
Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory.
3. Process writing at an efficient rate of speed
to suit the purpose.
4. Recognize a core of words, and interpret word
other patterns and their significance.
5.
Recognize grammatical words classes (nouns, verbs, etc), system (e.g., tense,
agreement, pluralization), word order, patterns, rules and elliptical forms.
6.
Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical
forms.
7. Recognize cohesive devices in written
discourse and their role in
8.
Recognize the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their significance for
interpretation.
9. Recognize the communicate functions of
written texts, according to form and purpose.
10.
Infer context that is not explicit by using background knowledge.
11.
From described events, ideas, etc., infer links and connections between events,
deduce causes and effects, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting
idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.
12.
Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
13.
Detect culturally specific references and interpret them in a context of the
appropriate cultural schemata.
14.
Develop and use a battery of reading strategies, such as scanning and skimming,
detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words from context, and
activating schemata fro the interpretation of texts.
Storehouse
of reading strategies, as indicate in item 14. Aside from simply testing the
ultimate achievement of comprehension of a written text, it may be important
in some contexts to assess one or more
of a storehouse of classic reading strategies. The brief taxonomy of strategies
below is a list of possible assessment criteria.
Some principal
strategies for readi.tg 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 aren't certain.
5. Skim the text for the gist and for the main
ideas.
6. Scan the text for the specific information
(names; dates, key words).
7. Use silent reading techniques for rapid
processing.
8.
Use marginal notes, outlines, charts, or semantic maps for understanding and
retaining information.
9. Distinguish between literal and implied
meanings.
10.
Capitalize on discourse markers to process relationships.
(c) TYPES OF READING
In the previous
chapters we saw that both listening and speaking could be subdivided into at
least five different types of listening and speaking performance. In the case
of reading, variety of performance is derived more from multiply of types of
texts (the genres listed above) 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 assessment
tasks.
1. Perceptive. In keeping with the set of
categories specified for listening comprehension, similar specifications are
offered here, except with some differing terminology to capture the uniqueness
of reading. Perceptive reading tasks involve attending to components of larger
stretches of discourse letters, words, punctuation, and other graphemic
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
are used: picture-cued tasks, matching, true/false, multiple-choice, etc.
Stimuli include sentences, brief paragraphs, and simple charts and graphs.
Brief responses are intended as well. A combination of bottom-up and top-down processing
may be used.
3. Interactive.
Included among interactive reading types are stretches of language of
several paragraphs to one page or more in which the reader must, in a
psycholinguistics sense, interact with the text. That is, reading is a process
of negotiating meaning the reader brings to the text a set of schemata for
understanding it, and in take .s the product of that interaction. Typical
genres that lend themselves to interactive reading are anecdotes, short
narratives and descriptions, excerpts from longer texts, questionnaires, memos,
announcements, directions, recipes, and the like. The focus of an 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 tasks, although some instance of bottom-up performance may be necessary.
4. Extensive.
Extensive reading, as discussed in this book, applies t' texts of more
than a page, up to and including professional articles, essays technical
reports, short stories, and books. (It should be noted that reading research
commonly refers to "extensive reading" as longer stretches of
discourse such as long articles and books that are usually read outside a
classroom hour. (massaged a little in order to encompass any text longer than a
page.) 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" on small
details. Top-down processing is assumed for most extensive tasks.
(d) DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: PERCEPTIVE
READING
At the beginning
level of reading a second language lies a set of tasks that are fundamental and
basic: recognition of alphabetic symbols, capitalized and lowercase letters,
punctuation, words, and grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Such tasks of
perception are often referred to as literacy tasks, implying that the learner
is in the early stages of becoming literate. Some learners are already literate
in their own native language, but in other cases the second language may be the
first language that they have ever learned to read. This latter context poses
cognitive and some-times age-related issues that need to be considered
carefully. Assessment of literacy is no easy assignment, and if you are
interested in this particular challenging area, further reading beyond this
book is advised (Harp. 1991; Farr &Tone, 1994; Genesee, 1994; Cooper,
1997). Assessment of basic reading skills may be carried out in a number of
different ways.
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.
Written Response
The same stimuli are
presented, and the test-taker's task is to reproduce the probe in writing.
Because of the transfer across different skills here, evaluation of the
test-taker's response must he carefully treated. If an error occurs, make sure
you deter-mine its source; what might be assumed to be a writing error, for
example, may actually be a reading error, and vice versa.
Multiple-Choice
Multiple-choice
responses are not only a matter of choosing one of four or five possible
answers. Other formats, some of which are especially useful at the low levels
of reading, include same/different, circle the answer, true/false, choose the
letter, and matching. Here are some possibilities.
(e) DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: SELECTIVE READING
Just above the
rudimentary skill level of perception of letters and words is a category in
which the test designer focuses on
formal aspects of language (lexical, grammatical, and a few discourse features).
This category includes what many incorrectly think of as testing
"vocabulary and grammar." How many textbooks provide little tests and
quizzes labeled "vocabulary and grammar" and never feature any other
skill besides reading? Lexical and grammatical aspects of language are simply
the forms we use to perform all four of the skills of listening, speaking,
reading, and writing. (Notice that in all of these chapters on the four skills,
formal features of language have become a potential focus for assessment.) Here
are some of the possible tasks you can use to assess lexical and grammatical
aspects of reading ability.
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 reasons of practicality: 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.
Matching Tasks
At this selective
level of reading, the test-taker's 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:
·
Vocabulary
matching task
·
Selected
response till-in t vocabulary task
Alderson
(2000, p. 218) suggested matching procedures at an even more sophisticated
level, where test-takers have to discern pragmatic interpretations of certain
signs or labels such as "Freshly made sandwiches" and "L;se
before 10/23/02." Matches for those two are "We sell food" and
"This is too old: which are selected from a number of other options.
Matching tasks have
the advantage of offering an alternative to traditional multiple-choice or fi
ll-in-the-blank formats and are sometimes easier to construct than
multiple-choice items, as long as the test designer has chosen the matches
carefully. Some disadvantages do come with this framework, however. They can become
more of a puzzle-solving process than a genuine test of comprehension as
test-takers struggle with the search for a match, possibly among 10 or 20
different items. Like other tasks in this section, they also are contrived
exercises that are endemic to academia that will seldom be found in the real
world.
Editing Tasks
Editing for
grammatical or rhetorical errors is a widely used test method for assessing
linguistic competence in reading. The TOEFL® and many other tests employ this
technique with the argument that it not only focuses on grammar but also
introduces a simulation of the authentic task of editing, or discerning errors
in written passages. Its authenticity may be supported if you consider
proof-reading as a real-world skill that is being tested. Here is a typical set
of examples of editing.