ELT Testing and Assessment

1. ELT Testing and Assessment Session 5

2. Assessing WritingReview of genres (a partial list): • Academic Writing • Papers and general subject reports • Essays, compositions • Academically focused journals • Short-answer test responses • Technical reports (e.g. lab reports) • Theses, dissertations

3. Job-Related Writing • Messages (e.g. phone messages) • Letters • Emails • Memos (e.g. interoffice) • Reports (e.g. job evaluations, project reports) • Schedules, labels, signs • Advertisements, announcements • Manuals

4. Personal Writing • Letters, emails, greeting cards, invitations • Messages, notes • calendar entries, shopping lists, reminders • Financial documents (e.g. checks, tax forms, loan applications) • Forms, questionnaires, medical reports, immigration documents • Diaries, personal journals • Fiction (e.g. short stories, poetry)

5. Types of Writing Performance • Imitative – for handwriting, punctuation, spelling, phoneme-grapheme correspondence, numbers • Intensive (controlled) – esp. producing appropriate vocabulary in context, focus on form • Responsive – at a limited discourse level, connecting sentences into paragraph, sequencing, etc. • Extensive – management of all processes and strategies of writing for all purposes; focus is often on process – not just product

6. Writing Microskills • Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English • Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose • Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order patterns • Use acceptable grammatical systems (e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization) • Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms • Use cohesive devices in written discourse

7. Macroskills • Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse • Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form & purpose • Convey links/connections between events, communicate relations as main idea, new info, etc. • Distinguish between literal and implied meaning • Convey culturally specific references in context • Develop and use batter of writing strategies (e.g. interpreting audience’s interpretation, drafting, paraphrasing, using feedback, etc.)

8. Designing Assessment Tasks:

9. 1. Imitative Skills • Tasks in handwriting, words, punctuation EXAMPLE: S reads: Copy the following words in the spaces given: bit bet bat but ____ _______ ________ ________ Oh? Oh! Hello, John. ______ ______ ________________

10. EXAMPLE: Ss hear: Write the following words in each blank. Below the story is a list of words to choose from. Have you ever visited San Francisco? It is a very nice city. It is cool in the summer and warm in the winter. I like the cable cards and bridges. Ss see: Have ______ ever visited San Francisco? It ____ a very nice _____. It is _____ in ______ summer and _____ in the winter. I ______ the cable cars _____ bridges. is you cool city like and warm the

11. Spelling & phoneme-grapheme correspondence tasks • Spelling tests • Picture-cued tasks (focusing on familiar words whose spelling is unpredictable)

12. Multiple-choice techniques: • He washed his hands with __________. a. soap b. sope c. sop d. soup 2. Using IPA (or other phonetic symbol system used by you and your students)

13. 2. Intensive (controlled) Writing • Controlled – or display – tasks – goal is for Ss to produce language to display competence in grammar, vocabulary, sentence formation – not necessarily to convey meaning for an authentic purpose

14. Dictation • Dicto-Comp • Level appropriate text is read at normal speed, usually 2 or 3 times – then Ss recreate text from memory • Variation: T. distributes handout with key words, in sequence as cues for Ss WORKSHOP : • Listen as text read 3 times (no notes) • Rewrite paragraph from memory • Compare with neighbor • If you were giving this “test,” which cue words would you give students?

15. Grammatical Transformation Tasks, e.g. • Change the tenses in a paragraph • Change full forms of verbs to contractions • Change statements to Y/N or wh- questions • Combine 2 sentences into 1 using a relative pronoun • Etc. • CON: devoid of any meaningful value • PRO: easy to administer and score and does tap into some grammatical knowledge

16. Picture-Cued Tasks What form(s) do you think these pictures could be used to test?

17. Scoring scale for controlled writing • Grammatically and lexically correct • Either grammar or vocabulary is incorrect, but not both 0 Both grammar and vocabulary are incorrect

18. Ordering Tasks EXAMPLE: S reads: Put the words below into the correct order to make a sentence: Cold / winter / is / weather / the / in / the

19. Short-Answer and Sentence Completion Tasks Examples: • Jennifer: _________________? Kathy: I’m studying English. • Restate the following sentences in your own words, using the underlined word. You may need to change the meaning a little. 2a. I never miss a day of school. always 2b. I’m pretty healthy most of the time. seldom

20. 3. Look at the schedule of Roberto’s week. Write two sentences describing what Roberto does, using the words before and after. • Write 3 sentences describing your preferences: a big, expensive car or a small, cheap car; a house in the country or an apartment in the city; money or good health

21. 3. Responsive and 4. ExtensiveWriting • Presented together as a continuum of possibilitiies

22. Paraphrasing - • Why is it important for learners to be able to do this? Example: Read the following sentence. Paraphrase this sentence retaining the key information. One of the most difficult concepts for second language learners to grasp is paraphrasing.

23. Guided Question and Answer Referring back to a narrative already presented, teacher poses questions to stimulate the production of a sequence of sentences: • Where did this story take place? (setting) • Who were the people in the story? (characters) • What happened first? And then? And then? (reasons, causes) • Why did X do Y? (reasons, causes) • What did X think about Y? (opinion) • What happened at the end? (climax) • What is the moral of the story? (evaluation)

24. Paragraph Construction Tasks • Topic sentence writing • Topic development within a paragraph • Development of main and supporting ideas across paragraphs

25. Academic Writing • Process: freewriting, brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising • Attending to task: e.g. compare/contrast; problem/solution; pros/cons; cause/effect • Attending to genre: • Reports (lab reports, project summaries, book reports) • Summaries of readings, lectures, videos • Responses to readings, lectures, videos • Narration, description, persuasion/argument, exposition • Interpreting statistical, graphic, tabular data • Library research paper

26. Assessing Reading • In order to become efficient readers, learners need to master fundamental • Bottom-up strategies for processing separate letters, words, and phrases • AND • Top-down, conceptually driven strategies for comprehension • PLUS • Develop appropriate content and formal schemata (background information and cultural experience) to carry out interpretations

27. Genres of Reading • 1. Academic Reading, e.g. • technical reports • textbooks • 2. Job-related Reading, e.g. • interoffice memos • job evaluations • 3. Personal Reading, e.g. • Magazines • novels

28. READING and ASSESSMENT

29. Types of Reading • 1. Perceptive – focusing on the components – letters, words, punctuation. Bottom-up processing is implied • 2. Selective – to check recognition of lexical, grammatical, or discourse features, within very short stretch of language. • 3. Interactive – longer stretches of language where reader must interact (psycholinguistically) with text. Top-down processing required. • 4. Extensive – more than 1 page NOTE: you’ll find varying criteria for the definition of extensive

30. Designing: 1. Perceptive Reading • Reading aloud (caution: since task is to test reading – any recognizable oral approximation of target is considered correct • Multiple-choice (here – a few different formats) EXAMPLE: Circle “S” for same or “D” for Different • led let S D • Bit bit S D

31. Grapheme recognition task Circle the “odd” item, the one that doesn’t “belong.” • piece peace piece • book book boot

32. Picture-cued • Word ID In the picture, point to the word you read here: Lamp Chair Picture Table

33. Picture-cued sentence identification Point to the part of the picture that you read about here. The woman is holding a cat. The man is reading the newspaper. It is snowing outside.

34. 2. Selective Reading • Testing for reading knowledge of vocabulary and grammar • Everyone’s favorite: Multiple-choice!! WORKSHOP : Working in pairs: On the following slides, you will see a stem. For each one, decide what you think the Key should be. Then write 2-3 distractors. Make your distractors effective! After all are done, compare your product with another pair.

35. Write M-C Key and Distractors: Standard M-C: • He’s not married. He’s _________________. • If there’s no doorbell, please _________ on the door. Contextualized M-C: • Oscar: Do you like champagne? Lucy: No, I can’t _____________ it!

36. Multiple-Choice Cloze I’ve lived in the United States (1) _____ three years. I (2) ______ live in Costa Rica. I (3) _____ speak any English. I used to (4) __________ homesick, but now I enjoy (5) __________ here. I have never (6) _________ back home (7) ______ I came to the United States, but I might (8) _______ visit my family soon.

37. Matching WORKSHOP : The test task is for Ss to match word with definitions Look at the words being tested – then think of the definition word(s) you would use for the match. Then compare your ideas with another pair. • Exhausted • Disappointed • Enthusiastic • Empathetic

38. Editing Model: The abrasively action of the wind wears away softer A B C Layers of rock. D

39. WORKSHOP: Look at the sentences below (they are 100% correct). Decide which word(s) you will make “incorrect” (you’ll need to change it. What grammar point are you testing with this “error”? Then choose 3 other word(s) as your distractors. Label the key and distractors as A B C D. Show your ideas to another pair.

40. There are two ways of making a gas condense: cooling it or putting it under pressure. • Researchers have discovered that the application of bright light can sometimes be used to overcome jet lag.