Course: TEACHING OF ENGLISH (6508)

Level: MA teaching education

Semester: autumn 2022
Student name: AMMARA ABBAS
Id:

ASSIGNMENT No. 2

Q.1 Write a note on internal punctuations.

• Punctuation: A Point of Order

• Commas and Serial Commas
• Colons and Semi-Colons
• Dashes and Parenthesis
• Bracketing and Ellipsis
• Recreational Punctuation Use
This chapter is dedicated to the most commonly used—and, misused—forms of punctuation that
go inside a sentence. If you'd like to learn about end punctuation—periods, question marks, and
exclamation points—consult "Sentence Moods." Answers to questions about markers—
apostrophes, italics and quotation marks—can be found in "Showcased Nouns” as part of the
discussion of quotations, titles, and other atypical noun phrases and clauses; bracketing and
ellipsis are also part of that discussion.

PUNCTUATION: A POINT OF ORDER

If you've ever studied the movements of an orchestra conductor, then you know that the pointer
means everything. A bad conductor can't properly orchestrate the complex musical sounds,
phrases, and movements unless she or he knows how to point. Different methods of pointing can
signal changes and actions, and the precision of such signals translates into the exacting precision
of the orchestration, itself. So it is with sentence punctuation. In fact, the verb
“punctuate” derives from the Latin verb meaning “to point.” Words such as “puncture,”
“punctual” and “punctilious” are related because they're about being exact in the way they point
—creating a specific point of entry, adhering to a specific point in time, following a specific
point of law, and so on. I've been accused of being punctilious on occasion, but the point of
punctuation is to point readers in the exact direction you want them to go. However, a change of
“direction” in this sense could mean a lot of different things: a change of feeling, a change of
idea, and change of tempo, and so on. Just as conductors need different techniques for pointing,
writers need different marks of punctuation—different pointers—to direct readers correctly.

For that reason, we should begin with what students “point to” as the most common source of
writing frustration and irritation, the damnable comma.

COMMAS AND SERIAL COMMAS

Let's all pause to settle an important existential paradox: what came first, the chicken or the
comma?
The Greek verb koptein means, "to smite" or "to cut off”; it comes from the Latin capo, the root
word for the verb “caponize,” meaning “castrate”—which is how a poor, emasculated rooster
running around with more than just its head cut off ends up on the menu as “capon.” At first
glance, the word “comma” seems unrelated to any of this, except that it's derived from the Greek
komma, the process of stamping out and die-cutting coins. As a matter of fact, the Russian
kopeck gets its name from koptein, the very action that snipped the rooster's coin purse.
Therefore, in a manner of speaking, the blade once used to stamp out the kopecks that paid the
chef who butchered the capon that turned into lunch at a restaurant in Moscow, should make us
pause to reflect the humble heritage of the comma.

Commas
,
Sketchy as this etymological journey may have seemed, it reinforces the most important role of
the comma: to “cut off” and “stamp out.” You've already picked up this idea as you've refined
your understanding of parts of speech and sentence mechanics over the course of the semester,
for parts of speech gather into phrases and clauses that “cut off” other clauses and phrases to
“stamp out” ideas, and they often do it by enclosing themselves in—yep!—commas. While
students often correctly interpret comma usage as a pause within the sentence, they
frequently misinterpret what a pause actually is. For the record, then, a pause in a sentence
happens when an idea is interrupted, not when, in your mind, you stop to take a breath.
Pausing is a syntactical process, a way of cutting up a sentence to stamp out and arrange
discrete ideas.
Take, for example, the following random phrases:

an elegant woman
tossing topsy-turvy roses
into the fire throws a fit
having a bad day

Each of these “stamps out” an individual idea; each contributes its kopeck's worth of information.
If you try to combine these into a sentence, however, some of them will link together to create
more complete ideas, while others will still fit into the same sentence but interrupt the flow of
those complete ideas:

Having a bad day, an elegant woman throws a fit, tossing topsy-turvy roses into the fire.
Tossing topsy-turvy roses into the fire, an elegant woman having a bad day throws a fit.
Having a bad day tossing topsy-turvy roses, an elegant woman, into the fire, throws a fit.
Into the fire, an elegant woman, tossing topsy-turvy roses, throws a fit, having a bad day.

Whatever arrangement you make, you're forced to cut off one idea in order to stamp out another,
and you need commas to let the reader know when to pause for that change of phrasing.
Phrasing and “clausing” are, not surprisingly, the main reasons to use commas. We set off direct
address nouns and appositive phrases by commas, the phrasing of dates and addresses requires
commas, placing of modifiers and modifying phrases before their subjects frequently resorts to
commas, listing anything in a series of three or more expects commas, and the building of
compound and complex sentences depends upon commas:

Direct Address: “Janice, pass me the bread please.”

Appositives: “I'll ask Rex, the man with the answers, what we should do.”
Dates and “Max was born on December 18, 1954, in Mobile, Alabama, U.S.A.”
Addresses:

Modifying phrases: “Running for his life, he turned down a dark alley.”
“He stopped to rest, exhausted by his ordeal.”
“To escape a fate worse than death, he kept to the shadows.”
“At the end of the alley, he found an unlocked door.”
Compound “Buy a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to fish, and he'll
Clauses: eat for lifetime.”

Dependent Clauses: “When the guest of honor arrives, let's all shout!”
“They missed their connecting flight, which spells disaster.”
“I'll finish this dessert for your sake, even though I don't like sweets.”
Quotes and
Dialogue: “She took one taste and exclaimed, 'Yuck!'”

Some Interjections: “What, darn it all, are we going to do now?”

Items in a Series: “Of faith, hope, and love, the greatest of these is love.”

For most of these, two factors, “pause” and “interruption," determine the need for commas.
Nowhere is this clearer than with modifying words, phrases, and clauses. Using commas to
enclose or set apart dependent clauses and modifying words and phrases often relies on whether
or not they come before the subjects they modify and whether or not they interrupt the flow of
ideas. If so, this creates the syntactical interruption that you can “hear” as a pause followed by a
change of thought. However, when these come after their subjects and an interruption is no
longer there, a comma wouldn't be necessary. Let's take several examples from the list above to
illustrate this:

Before
“At the end of the alley, he found an unlocked door.”
“When the guest of honor arrives, let's all shout!”

After
“He found an unlocked door at the end of the alley.”
“Let's all shout when the guest of honor arrives!”

In these examples, moving the modifying parts after their subjects removes the interruption, and,
as a result, no comma is needed. Some modifiers, however, are interruptive no matter where you
put them, so they will always need commas to set them apart:

Before
“Exhausted by his ordeal, he stopped to rest.”
“I'll finish this dessert for your sake, even though I don't like sweets.”
After
“He stopped to rest, exhausted by his ordeal.”
“Even though I don't like sweets, I'll finish this dessert for your sake.”

Once again, the factors of interruption and pause are at work, so commas are needed to enclose
or set apart these ideas.

“Pause” and “interruption” are the rational side of comma use and, even if you can't remember
the rules of commas as they apply to specific phrases, you can at least deploy commas
confidently if you follow these suggestions. At other times, though, comma use is strictly a
matter of convention or tradition having nothing to do with reason—how we delimit information
in dates and addresses, for example. Although the absence of logic in such cases might worry
you, you can still take comfort in the fact that hard and fast rules still apply to these conventions,
and rules can be used consistently and reliably once you memorize them. (Yes, that's a strong
hint.)

If you'd like to learn more about the conventional use of commas, see


o “Noun Phrases and Clauses,”

o “Showcased Nouns,” o “Conjunctions,” and o
“Interjections.”

Serial Commas “x, y, and z”

What do magazines, monogamists, and killing sprees have in common? Other than making you
think of tabloid journalism, they all come as a series: serial publications include magazines,
yearbooks, and many other periodicals, serial monogamy is the practice of having only one
partner at a time, and a serial murderer kills again and again, and sometimes again. And, that last
sentence has a heck of a lot of series in it, as well as a heck of a lot of commas. When a series is
presented in writing, you need a system of commas to separate the items in a series. You're
already familiar with one of the major forms of serializing: compound sentences. Two or more
independent clauses joined by coordinating conjunctions requires the use of a comma before
each of those conjunctions. With compound sentences, though, two independent clauses are
enough to imply a series. Inside a clause, however, we identify a series as three or more of—
well, anything, really: three or more compound parts of speech, three or more items, phrases,
even dependent clauses. Series, then, always implies three or more items arranged in a list.

The “serial comma,” also known as the “Oxford comma,” is the convention of putting a comma
before the coordinating conjunction in the last item of the series:
Ben Franklin once wrote, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and
wise.”

In the example above, the compound infinitive phrases that make up the subject of the sentence
have no commas to separate them, because they're a series of two, not three or more. However,
“healthy, wealthy, and wise” are a triplet, so the last word in the series, “wise,” is set apart with a
comma and a coordinating conjunction. (Yes, you could make a convincing argument that the
verb should be "make," not "makes," but that's how Franklin wrote it—let it go for now.)

A serial comma is not always needed, nor wanted. Sometimes, your intention is to put two or
more things at the end of a series that go together as a single concept. For instance, The
applicant described himself as knowledgeable, experienced, ready and willing.

Even though “and” appears to come right before the fourth adjective in a series, the turn of
phrase “ready and willing” is of apiece, so you wouldn't want to break it up with a comma. You
might, instead, put an additional conjunction in the series:
The applicant described himself as knowledgeable, experienced, and ready and willing.

Some, however, would contend that two conjunctions this close to each other make for clumsy
writing. I'm of a similar mind on this point.
On the other hand, in some cases if you omit the serial comma, you cause a double entendre, or
worse:
He invited to his birthday party his mentor, his best friend and his sworn enemy.
Does this sentence mean that his mentor is also his best friend and enemy? Or, are they three
different people altogether? Sometimes, without the serial comma, it's hard to know if we're
dealing with an actual series or just another appositive phrase.

As you can see, the need for a serial comma ultimately comes down to the context and the type
of list you're composing.

COLONS AND SEMI-COLONS Colons

:
The word "colon" derives from the Latin word classifying a part of a poem, called a "strophe."
(Yes, it's related to the word "apostrophe," among other things. In fact, this is probably the first
time you've thought of a bowel movement as poetry in motion.) A strophe is a unit measuring
structure in Greek poetry. The equivalent of this in grammar is the sentence clause. Colons play a
major role in introducing other clauses and phrases, such as quotations. A full discussion of this
topic can be found in "Noun Phrases and Clauses" as well as "Showcased Nouns."

Colons are sometimes used after salutations and other notations in formal and business- style
letters, but even in this case the purpose is to spotlight and introduce:
• Attn: Selection Committee
• Re: mergers and acquisitions  To Whom It May Concern:
• Hello:
• cc:
• Word count:

Frequently, though, a colon comes at the end of an independent clause for one of two noble
purposes: 1) to spotlight one major thing; or 2) to introduce a series of things. To understand this,
you simply have to think of colons as the emcees of punctuation. At the crucial moment, an
emcee does the job of announcing and introducing, using remarks like, "Ladies and gentleman,
please help me welcome...!" Sometimes the show has only one main guest, in which case the
emcee relinquishes the spotlight so that the main act takes over—that's that. Other times, though,
an emcee has to play host to a series of guests and must introduce them as separate but related
acts; then, the emcee is responsible for coordinating the parts of a show, and making sure each
part follows the same format.

Colons do the job of announcing and introducing, too. Sometimes they spotlight just one main
idea, building up a bit of anticipation for it:

Membership in our club has but one strict and non-negotiable rule: no drama. Most dictionaries
readily point out that "irregardless" is not a legitimate word: it's a mixed- up blend of
"regardless" and "irrespective."

At other times, colons introduce a series of ideas, in which case the colon is responsible for
coordinating each item, and making sure each follows a parallel format:

Drag artists have a tradition of choosing stage names that are double entendres: Tequila
Mockingbird, Courtney Act, Amanda Hugginkiss, and so on.

Contrasting colors are always one of the three primary colors and the blend of the remaining two:
red contrasts green, a blend of blue and yellow; blue contrasts orange, a blend of yellow and red;
yellow contrasts purple, a blend of red and blue.

By "coordinating" and "parallel format," I'm obviously referring to arranging elements in a series
with parallel structure, which uses the same grammatical template for all the elements in the
series. In the last example, above, each element in the series is a brief clause consisting of a color
as its subject, the transitive verb "contrasts," another color as its object, and an appositive phrase
renaming the object:
subj. noun [color] + trans. verb "contrasts" + obj. noun [color] + appos. phrase

Colons are not interchangeable with semi-colons, even though they're closely related. This is a
common point of confusion, and knowing how to navigate past it depends upon your
understanding of the part each plays in a sentence that includes a series. To put it succinctly, a
colon classifies, and a semi-colon divides.

Semi-Colons
;
Semi-colons are a cross between a colon and a serial comma. (We could have coined them
“commons” or “colas” if those words weren't already taken, so the less-than- imaginative
“semicolon” will have to do.) “Semi” implies that a semi-colon does part of the work of a colon:
while colons measure the full clause, semi-colons measure the elements within that clause (such
as words and phrases). The sort-of exception to this rule is the compound sentence: semi-colons
can sometimes replace coordinating conjunctions and their commas, when two or more
independent clauses are joined together into a compound sentence. Though it's by no means a
law, in most cases a conjunctive adverb follows the semi-colon, to reinforce the close connection
between one clause and the next:

With women banned from participating in Elizabethan theater, William Shakespeare became one
of the first to use the acronym D.R.A.G., "dressed to read as girl"; however, he was far from
being the first to cast males in female roles.

Furthermore, like the serial comma, the primary job of a semi-colon is to coordinate elements in
a series, but only if they are introduced by a colon:

RuPaul identifies four qualities contestants should have to win his drag reality competition:
charisma; uniqueness; nerve; talent.

As with serial commas, serial semi-colons are used only when three or more listed elements need
separating. This is why I say, a semi-colon divides while a colon classifies. The colon tells us
that what's to come on the list is a collection of separate elements all deserving the same
classification, but the semi-colon does the job of breaking down that classification into
constituent parts. You can still use commas after a colon if the list is short and simple, but, with a
colon, you're granted the permission to use semi-colons instead. In the example above, the
semicolons could just as well have been commas, because it's pretty clear where one item on the
list ends and the next one begins:

RuPaul identifies four qualities contestants should have to win his drag reality competition,
charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent.

Simple lists like the one in the example above can, without much confusion, be included as
appositive phrases. (The list above renames "four qualities.") However, with four or more items
in the series, it's a courtesy and a practicality to use semi-colons instead of commas. When you're
arranging a list of complex phrases, for instance, often you're already using commas in other
ways, so you need a different punctuation mark to show readers where these items are segregated
from one another. Consider the following example:

Drag entertainment comes with several stereotypical and largely false perceptions: many people,
especially heterosexual males, think you have to be gay to do drag, people assume doing drag is
the same as being a transvestite, which has actually very little to do with most drag performance,
and, probably even more commonly, people assume drag performers are transsexuals who have
completed sexual reassignment surgery, which is not only rare, but, in fact, most drag performers
exit the stage door styled to look like ordinary men.

Because of how many commas are used in this long-ish example, the sentence is not only
comma-spliced in places, it's rambling and confusing. Semi-colons would be a practical way to
sort this out, separating the individual elements from one another in the list and letting the
commas do other jobs within those elements:

Drag entertainment comes with several stereotypical and largely false perceptions: many people,
especially heterosexual males, think you have to be gay to do drag; people assume doing drag is
the same as being a transvestite, which has actually very little to do with most drag performance;
and, probably even more commonly, people assume drag performers are transsexuals who have
completed sexual reassignment surgery, which is not only rare, but, in fact, most drag performers
exit the stage door styled to look like ordinary men.
Q.2 What is meant by transfer of information? How it can be achieved in language
classroom?

Transfer of Information

Have you ever learned to play a musical instrument? Imagine that you took guitar lessons when
you were a child. If you learned to play the guitar, and now you wanted to learn a different
musical instrument, do you think your guitar skills would hurt you or help you? When previous
knowledge or skills help or hurt your ability to learn something new, that's called transfer of
information, and that's the topic of this lesson.
Transfer of information is how skills or knowledge that students have learned about one topic
affect their learning of skills or knowledge in another topic or area. Sometimes transfer of
information can help students learn more quickly or more easily. However, in other
circumstances, transfer of information can hurt learning. Let's talk about several different kinds
of transfer of information.

Positive, Negative and Zero Transfer

Transfer of information has been broken down into three major types, which include positive,
negative and zero transfer.

The first type is positive transfer. Positive transfer is when knowledge or skills about a previous
topic help a student learn a new skill or learn about a new topic. I remember that when I was a
little girl I learned to play the guitar. A key step to learning any musical instrument is to learn
how to read sheet music, such as how the notes spell the word 'FACE' on the paper, indicating
the order of notes. So I learned how to read the notes to play the guitar. When I was a little bit
older, I started to learn how to play the piano and I realized that the order of notes on the sheet
music for piano was the same as the order for guitar! This transfer of information was therefore
positive, meaning that the knowledge I had about playing guitar had helped me learn how to play
the piano as well.
However, there can also be negative transfer. Negative transfer is when knowledge or skills
about a previous topic hurt a student or interfere with learning about a new skill or topic. I have a
personal story about negative transfer as well. When I was in college, I started to take martial arts
classes in a particular art called Tae Kwon Do. When you learn Tae Kwon Do, you learn to point
the toes of your front foot directly toward your opponent. However, a little later I started to take
classes in a different martial art, called American Kenpo. In American Kenpo, you don't point
your front foot directly toward your opponent because it makes it easier for him or her to break
your knee. But I had already formed the habit of pointing my toes, so the skills I had learned in
my first martial art actually caused me problems in the second one. This is an example of
negative transfer because the habits I had already formed caused me trouble in doing the second
skill correctly.
The third and final type of information transfer is called zero transfer. Zero transfer just means
that previous skills or information have zero effect on learning new skills or information. In other
words, in this case the old information neither helps nor hurts the new information or skill. So,
being able to play the piano would have no effect, good or bad, on your ability to learn the
geography of Africa. Therefore, the information has zero effect.

Low-Road vs. High-Road

There's a second way to think about different types of transfer of information in addition to the
distinction of positive, negative and zero. This second way of thinking about it separates transfer
into two groups, called low-road and high-road.

Q.3 Enlist the steps in planning a lesson. Further develop a lesson plan from English grade
English tent book.

A lesson plan is the instructor‟s road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done
effectively during the class time. Then, you can design appropriate learning activities and
develop strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. Having a carefully constructed lesson
plan for each 3-hour lesson allows you to enter the classroom with more confidence and
maximizes your chance of having a meaningful learning experience with your students.

A successful lesson plan addresses and integrates three key components:

• Learning Objectives
• Learning activities
• Assessment to check for student understanding

A lesson plan provides you with a general outline of your teaching goals, learning objectives, and
means to accomplish them, and is by no means exhaustive. A productive lesson is not one in
which everything goes exactly as planned, but one in which both students and instructor learn
from each other.

BEFORE CLASS: STEPS FOR PREPARING A LESSON PLAN

Listed below are 6 steps for preparing your lesson plan before your class.

1. Identify the learning objectives

Before you plan your lesson, you will first need to identify the learning objectives for the lesson.
A learning objective describes what the learner will know or be able to do after the learning
experience rather than what the learner will be exposed to during the instruction (i.e. topics).
Typically, it is written in a language that is easily understood by students and clearly related to
the program learning outcomes. The table below contains the characteristics of clear learning
objectives:

Characteristic Description

Clearly stated tasks Free from jargon and complex vocabulary; describe specific and
achievable tasks (such as „describe‟, „analyse‟ or „evaluate‟) NOT
vague tasks (like „appreciate‟, „understand‟ or „explore‟).
Important learning goals Describe the essential (rather than trivial) learning in the course
which a student must achieve.

Achievable Can be achieved within the given period and sufficient resources are
available.

Demonstrable and Can be demonstrated in a tangible way; are assessable; achievement

measurable and quality of achievement can be observed.

Fair and equitable All students, including those with disabilities or constraints, have a
fair chance of achieving them.

Linked to course and Consider the broader goals - i.e. course, program and institutional
program objectives goals.

The Bloom‟s Revised Taxonomy of Educational Objectives is a useful resource for crafting
learning objectives that are demonstrable and measurable.

2. Plan the specific learning activities

When planning learning activities you should consider the types of activities students will need
to engage in, in order to develop the skills and knowledge required to demonstrate effective
learning in the course. Learning activities should be directly related to the learning objectives of
the course, and provide experiences that will enable students to engage in, practice, and gain
feedback on specific progress towards those objectives.

As you plan your learning activities, estimate how much time you will spend on each. Build in
time for extended explanation or discussion, but also be prepared to move on quickly to different
applications or problems, and to identify strategies that check for understanding. Some questions
to think about as you design the learning activities you will use are:

• What will I do to explain the topic?

• What will I do to illustrate the topic in a different way?
• How can I engage students in the topic?
• What are some relevant real-life examples, analogies, or situations that can help students
understand the topic?
• What will students need to do to help them understand the topic better?

Many activities can be used to engage learners. The activity types (i.e. what the student is doing)
and their examples provided below are by no means an exhaustive list, but will help you in
thinking through how best to design and deliver high impact learning experiences for your
students in a typical lesson.
It is important that each learning activity in the lesson must be (1) aligned to the lesson‟s
learning objectives, (2) meaningfully engage students in active, constructive, authentic, and
collaborative ways, and (3) useful where the student is able to take what they have learnt from
engaging with the activity and use it in another context, or for another purpose.

3. Plan to assess student understanding

Assessments (e.g., tests, papers, problem sets, performances) provide opportunities for students
to demonstrate and practice the knowledge and skills articulated in the learning objectives, and
for instructors to offer targeted feedback that can guide further learning.

Planning for assessment allows you to find out whether your students are learning. It involves
making decisions about:

• the number and type of assessment tasks that will best enable students to demonstrate
learning objectives for the lesson o Examples of different assessments o Formative and/or
summative

• the criteria and standards that will be used to make assessment judgements o Rubrics

• student roles in the assessment process o Self-assessment o Peer assessment

• the weighting of individual assessment tasks and the method by which individual task
judgements will be combined into a final grade for the course o information about how
various tasks are to be weighted and combined into an overall grade must be provided to
students

• the provision of feedback o giving feedback to students on how to improve their learning,
as well as giving feedback to instructors how to refine their teaching

4. Plan to sequence the lesson in an engaging and meaningful manner

Robert Gagne proposed a nine-step process called the events of instruction, which is useful for
planning the sequence of your lesson. Using Gagne‟s 9 events in conjunction with Bloom‟s
Revised Taxonomy of Educational Objectives aids in designing engaging and meaningful
instruction.
Q.4 Why are Audio visual aids so important to teaching learning process? What points
should be kept in mind while exhibiting an AV aid?

Audio Visual Materials is an techniques and which involves the sense of vision as well a s
hearing. It is usually used in presentation prepared by the businessman to show graphs on the
study of the company, college/university students to their reports and especially the teacher who
use audio visual materials to clearly explain the lesson to the students.

Audio Visual Aids:

Audio visual aids are any device which can be used to make the learning experience more
concrete, more realistic and more dynamic. Audio visual aid is the combination of two media:

• Auditory aids: Any instructional device that can be heard but not seen. E.g. Tape record,
Microphones, Ear phones etc..
• Visual aids: Any instructional device that can be seen, but not heard. Slide, film strips
etc..

Purpose of Audio Visual Aids:

• Best motivation.
• Clear image.
• Save energy and time.
• Antidote of the disease of verbal instructions.
• Capture attention.
• reinforcement to learner.
• Positive transfer of learning.
• Gain & hold student interest.
• Increase understanding and retention.
• Stimulate the development of understanding and attitudes.

Functions of Audio visual aides:

 • They supply a concrete basis for conceptual thinking and hence, reduce meaningless
word response of students.
• They have high degree of interest for students.
• They make learning more permanent.
• They offer a reality of experience which stimulate self activity on the part of pupil.
• Develop continuity of though; this is especially true of motion pictures.
• They provide experience not easily obtained through other materials and contribute to the
efficiency, depth and variety of learning.

Use of Audio Visual materials in education:

• Students will gain knowledge of the latest in evolving theoretical and practical
application in the communication field utilizing various resources and methods of
inquiry.
• Students will grow intellectually in their oral and written communication and critical
thinking skills.
• Student will become aware of the ethical and spiritual implications of communication on
a diverse and global level.
• Student will be knowledgeable of the latest in technology, software applications, and
visual communication skills with the ability to demonstrate the skills in using technology.

Q.5 Define validity of a lest. Further discuss the characteristics of a good test.

To be useful in determining a student's current knowledge levels and predicting a student's future
success, educational assessment tools must have validity. Understand the concept of validity as it
relates to assessments and learn about the three types of validity: content, construct, and
predictive. Explore the internal and external factors associated with validity, review its
relationship with reliability, and recognize the role of coefficients in measuring validity.
Updated: 08/20/2021
 Validity: Defined

The term validity has varied meanings depending on the context in which it is being used.
Validity generally refers to how accurately a conclusion, measurement, or concept corresponds to
what is being tested. For this lesson, we will focus on validity in assessments.

Validity is defined as the extent to which an assessment accurately measures what it is intended
to measure. Let me explain this concept through a real-world example. If you weigh yourself on
a scale, the scale should give you an accurate measurement of your weight. If the scale tells you
you weigh 150 pounds and you actually weigh 135 pounds, then the scale is not valid.

The same can be said for assessments used in the classroom. If an assessment intends to measure
achievement and ability in a particular subject area but then measures concepts that are
completely unrelated, the assessment is not valid.

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Factors That Impact Validity

Before discussing how validity is measured and differentiating between the different types of
validity, it is important to understand how external and internal factors impact validity.

A student's reading ability can have an impact on the validity of an assessment. For example, if a
student has a hard time comprehending what a question is asking, a test will not be an accurate
assessment of what the student truly knows about a subject. Educators should ensure that an
assessment is at the correct reading level of the student.
Student self-efficacy can also impact validity of an assessment. If students have low selfefficacy,
or beliefs about their abilities in the particular area they are being tested in, they will typically
perform lower. Their own doubts hinder their ability to accurately demonstrate knowledge and
comprehension.

Student test anxiety level is also a factor to be aware of. Students with high test anxiety will
underperform due to emotional and physiological factors, such as upset stomach, sweating, and
increased heart rate, which leads to a misrepresentation of student knowledge.

Measurement of Validity

Validity is measured using a coefficient. Typically, two scores from two assessments or measures
are calculated to determine a number between 0 and 1. Higher coefficients indicate higher
validity. Generally, assessments with a coefficient of .60 and above are considered acceptable or
highly valid.

Types of Validity

There are three types of validity that we should consider: content, predictive, and construct
validity. Content validity refers to the extent to which an assessment represents all facets of
tasks within the domain being assessed. Content validity answers the question: Does the
assessment cover a representative sample of the content that should be assessed?
For example, if you gave your students an end-of-the-year cumulative exam but the test only
covered material presented in the last three weeks of class, the exam would have low content
validity. The entire semester worth of material would not be represented on the exam.

Educators should strive for high content validity, especially for summative assessment purposes.
Summative assessments are used to determine the knowledge students have gained during a
specific time period.

Content validity is increased when assessments require students to make use of as much of their
classroom learning as possible.
The next type of validity is predictive validity, which refers to the extent to which a score on an
assessment predicts future performance.