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LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE ASSESSMENT

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 LANGUAGE AND
LITERATURE
ASSESSMENT

HANNAH REGINE DIANE T. COGLING, LPT

CONTENT

I. Listening Comprehension Tests

II. Testing Listening Comprehension

III. Oral Production Tests

IV. Testing Literature

 I. Listening Comprehension Tests

LISTENING

• Listening Comprehension is the process of relating language to concepts in one’s memory and to
references in the real world.

• Comprehension is the sense of understanding what the language used refers to in one’s
experience or in the outside world.

• Complete Comprehension refers to the listener having clear concept in memory for every
referent used by the speaker (Rost, 2002).

Listening Comprehension Process

• Executive Processing: Strategic Competence

• Goal Setting – assessing the situation taking stock of conditions surrounding a language
task (Buck, 2001).

• Acoustic/visual input – The external input into the listening comprehension process is an
acoustic signal representing the phonemes, the meaningful sounds of the language
(Buck, 2001)

• Audition – The act of hearing and identifying sounds.

• Pattern Synthesizer – focuses attention on and then processes acoustic/visual input in

short-term memory and stores a representation of the discourse as either linguistic
propositions or more likely as mental images of the content described in the discourse
which are continuously updated by new information (Van Dijk and Kintsch 1883).

• Monitoring – engaging in tasks to check the effectiveness of the takers performance.

• Executive Resources: Language Knowledge

• Grammatical Knowledge - Understanding short utterances on a literal semantic level.

This includes phonology, stress, intonation, spoken vocabulary, spoken syntax (Buck
2001: 104).

• Discoursal Knowledge – understanding longer utterances or interactive discourse

between two or more speakers.

• Functional Knowledge – Understanding the function or illocutionary force of an

utterance or longer text, and interpreting the intended meaning in terms of that.

• Sociolinguistic Knowledge – Understanding language of a particular socio-cultural

settings, and interpreting utterances in terms of the context of situation.

• Context Knowledge –

• Internal – prior knowledge of topical or cultural content

• External- Knowledge provided in the task.

Designing Listening Tests
Textual and Psychological aspects in Listening

• All physical features of spoken language that are not reflected in written language

• pause units (short 2–3-second bursts of speech)

• hesitations

• intonation

• stress

• variable speeds

• variable accents

• background sounds

• Linguistic features that are more common in spoken language

• colloquial vocabulary and expressions

• shorter, paratactically (additive) organized speech units

• false starts

• frequent use of ellipsis

• frequent use of unstated topics

• more indexical expressions (keyed to visible environmental features)

• more two-party negotiation of meaning (less original clarity)

• Psychological features unique to listening

• negotiative mode: the possibility for (and sometimes the necessity of) interacting with
speaker to clarify and expand meaning

• constructive mode: the possibility of working out a meaning that fits the context, and is
relevant to the listener and to the situation, incorporating visible contextual features

• transformative mode: the possibility of interacting with, ‘connecting’ with, and

• influencing the speaker’s ideas.

TESTING LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Framework for testing comprehension

• In many situations the testing of listening can be handled as part of the testing of spoken
interaction.

• It is essential; in these cases to decide on the conditions and operations that merit inclusion in a
test of listening comprehension.

Operations

Checklist of operations (microskills of listening)

a. Direct meaning comprehension

• Listening for gist

• Listening for main idea(s) or important information: includes tracing the development of
an argument, distinguishing the main ideas from supporting detail, differentiating
statement from example, differentiating a proposition from its argument, distinguishing
fact from opinion.

• Listening for specifics; involves recall of important details

• Determining speaker’s attitude/intentions toward listener/topic

(persuasion/explanation) where obvious from the text

b. Inferred meaning comprehension

• Making inferences and deductions; evaluating content in terms of information clearly

available from the text.

• Relating utterances to the social and situational context in which they are made

• Recognizing the communicative function of utterances

• Deducing meaning of unfamiliar lexical items from context.

C. Contributory meaning comprehension (micro linguistic)

• Understanding phonological features (stress, intonation, etc.)

• Understanding concepts (grammatical notions) such as comparison, cause, result,

degree, purpose

• Understanding discourse markers

• Understanding syntactic structure of the sentence and clause, e.g. elements of clause
structure, noun and verb modification, negation.

• Understanding grammatical cohesion, particularly reference.

• Understanding lexical cohesion through lexical set membership and collocation.

 • Understanding lexis

d. Listening and writing (note taking from lecture, telephone conversation, etc.)

• Ability to extract salient points to summarize the whole text, reducing what is heard to
an outline of the main points and important detail.

• Ability to extract selectively relevant key points from a text on a specific idea or topic,
especially involving the coordination of related information.

Performance Conditions

• Purpose of task for listener

• Number of speakers (monologue, e.g. lecture; dialogue, e.g. conversation; multi-participant, e.g.
seminar)

• Speaker-related variables: accent and pronunciation, speed at which discourse is uttered and
has to be processed, degree of pausing, degree of built-in redundancy, attitudes, personality,
degree of sympathetic adjustment in interactive tasks, speakers’ status, familiarity and gender)

• Nature of the texts: story, song, poem, play, lecture, instructions, directions, message, radio
announcement, joke, conversation (face to face and telephone), interview, television
documentary, focused social interaction, service encounters, news broadcast, public
announcement, discussion.

• Organizational : General features that should be taken account of –grammar, cohesion,

rhetorical organization

• Propositional:

• lexical range – common core, technical, semi-technical

• topic (genre/level of specificity/cultural bias, familiarity/interest/ relevance)

• status of speaker to listener, e.g. equal to equal, expert to layperson

• relationship between content of text and candidates’ background knowledge

• type of information (appropriate level of abstractness or concreteness)

• Illocutionary: Functional purpose, intention of the speaker, discoursal range (across texts)

Format For Testing Listening

• Direct Tests (The testing of Extensive Listening)

• Short-answer Questions

• Information Transfer Techniques

• Indirect Tests (The Testing of Intensive Listening)

• Dictation
 • Listening Recall

ORAL PRODUCTION TEST

Components

1. Pronunciation (including the segmental features vowels and consonants and the stress and
intonation pattern).

2. Grammar

3. Vocabulary

4. Fluency (the ease and speed of the flow of speech)

5. Comprehension, for oral communication certainly requires a subject to respond to speech as

well as to initiate it.

Types of Oral Production Test

Most test oral production fall into one of the following categories:

1. Relatively unstructured interviews, rated on carefully constructed scale.

2. Highly structured speech samples (generally recorded), rated according to very specific
criteria.

3. Paper-and-pencil objective tests of pronunciation, presumably providing indirect evidence of

speaking ability.

Scored Interviews

• Pronunciation

• Grammar

• Vocabulary

• Fluency

• Comprehension

Highly Structured Speech Samples

• Sentence Repetition

• Reading Passage

• Sentence Conversion

• Sentence Construction

• Response to pictorial stimulus

Paper – and – Pencil Test of Pronunciation

TESTING LITERATURE

Tips on Literature Testing

• Aim for balanced test. The test can include knowledge and skills items; guided, controlled and
free response items; and productive and receptive response type items.

• Use actual, authentic texts. The items require contact with actual texts. This will eliminate
dependence on prepared or memorized notes.

• Provide linguistic support when necessary. Vocabulary and/or structure (grammar) helps
eliminate linguistic difficulties that hinder the application of literary skills.

• Test items should require the application of skills and principles.

• Write the test items to meet the students’ level, not the teachers’ expectations.

• Devise questions that would encourage the test-takers to identify with and personalize the
texts they meet.

• Translate into test situations those activities found to be motivating in the classroom.

Common Forms in Testing Literature

• Multiple choice

• True or False

• Gap-Filling

• Essay Test

• Knowledge Question

• Oral test

Multiple Choice

• Difficult to design but easy to mark

• Exclusively examines knowledge

• Knowledge is limited to options provided

• Encourages guessing

• More than one option may be possible

True or False

• Does not demonstrate broader knowledge

• Difficult to construct in higher levels

 • Encourages guessing due to 50/50 chance

• Difficult to test attitudes toward learning

Gap Filling

• They must have a broader context

• More than one option may be possible (unless tester provides limited options or first letter)

• Tests can focus on content words

• Production is tested unless options are provided

• Focus should be on the aspect assessed

Essay Test

• frequently essay questions in literature course are based on subject matter discussed in class.

• requires the students to organize their thoughts and substantiate their interpretations.

• a highly valid test form

Knowledge Question

• encourages reading of the texts

• they are authentic and communicative

• a highly valid test form

Oral Test Positive Points

• permit a broader sampling of the subject matter

• confront with more direct questions Negative Points

• difficult too score with complete reliability

• Teacher and student rapport may tend to influence the best grade

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