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Unit 4 – Assessment of Grammar

4.0 Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of this unit, you will be able to:

a. Identify, discuss, and illustrate the assessment of grammar based on Larsen-Freeman’s

model and by using a variety of communicative activities.

4.1 Introduction
Grammatical Assessment is a teaching approach that is used to measure and monitor a
student’s knowledge and skills on grammar. It takes into consideration the accuracy, fluency,
comprehension, and grammatical structure. It is also used to identify the language proficiency
and efficiency of students. The acquired knowledge is not used just for the cognitive purposes,
but also for putting it into contexts and situations.

4.2 Topics/Discussion
1. Traditional Approach in Assessing Grammar
– Grammatical knowledge is defined in terms of accurate production and comprehension,
then, assess through the four (4) skills.
– Testing is usually done by means of decontextualized, discrete point items:
sentence unscrambling
fill-in-the-blank
error correction
sentence completion
sentence combining
picture description
elicited imitation
judging grammatical correctness
modified cloze passages
– These formats test grammar knowledge, but they do not assess whether test takers can
use grammar correctly in real-life speaking or writing.

2. Communicative or Proficiency-Based Approach (1970s & 1980s)

– This significant contribution was a shift from seeing language proficiency in terms of
knowledge of structures, which can be assessed using discrete-point items, the ability to
integrate and use the knowledge in performance, assessed through:
production and comprehension of written text
face-to-face interaction under real time processing conditions

3. More Integrative Approach to Grammar Assessment

– Grammatical performance is typically assessed by raters using scales that gauge
grammatical accuracy, complexity, and the range of grammatical structures used.
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– The judgments are subjective because the assessment formats are more open-minded, they
are subject to possible inconsistencies.
– For this reason, certain factors, such as rater severity and prompt difficulty, must be
examined, usually accomplished by means of generalizability theory or item-response
theory (Purpura, 2006).
→ Generalizability theory - is a statistical framework for conceptualizing or measuring specific
conditions. It is particularly useful for assessing reliability of performance.

Five Characteristics to Measure Communicative Grammar:

1. The test must provide more context than only a single sentence.
2. The test taker should understand what the communicative purpose of the task is.
3. He or she should also know who the intended audience is.
4. He or she must have to focus on meaning and not form to answer correctly.
5. To recognize is not sufficient. The test taker must be able to produce grammatical
responses.

Therefore:
Have the test taker say or write something of discourse length in order to perform some
communicative task for a known audience and what is said or written must make sense.

Separated but closely related to assessing writing and assessing speaking.

a. Oral performance
b. Writing samples
Accuracy and Fluency
Count the errors and rate their severity

Focus on Grammar only.

a. Meaning is a separated matter.
b. Integrated tests - test more than one skill and/or item at a time.
c. Discrete point tests - test one element of language at a time.

a. Traditional Paper and Pencil Test

Types of Questions:
Complete sentences
Sentence combining
Paragraph editing
Multiple choice
Fill in the blank
True or false

b. Alternative Assessment
1. Games
– design to restrict the language need
– usually these games are defined by their focus on:
a. The use of language
b. Limited options for communication
c. Accuracy
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2. Class observation
a. Classroom activities
b. Classroom communication

3. Portfolio
– a purposeful collection of a student’s work.

You can also use:

Split Sentences - to measure student’s abilities in combining sentences.

Examples:
If you eat that
If you touch
If you go out now
If you don’t leave
If you steal my girlfriend
If you go out now
a. you will be sick
b. it will bite you
c. I will never speak to you again
d. I will call the police
e. you will get soaked
f. you'll be lucky to get a seat

Sentences from pictures - hand out a sheet of pictures. Ask students to come up sentences from
the pictures or ask them to tell stories.
Example:

Picture Dictation
- A student tries to describe the picture to other students who have not seen it.
- Testing if a student can make sentences which can help him/her communicate well
Example:
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Strip Story
- Make students into groups and assign them a text from a strip story. Ask them to find the
order and resolve the problem from the story.
- See if the students can find the time order from the tenses of the sentences.
Example:

Miming an action
- ask student to role play in a limited situation. Through acting, it can test student’s ability of
thinking of lines.

Growing Stories
- story building activities
- students' ability of making sentences with different tenses
Example:
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Innovations in Grammar Assessment

• proposed number of innovations in which grammar is being assessed.

Redefining the construct

– involves a definition of the grammar construct itself
– expanding beyond form to include grammatical meaning
Example:
Purpua (2004, p.8) defines grammatical ability for assessment purposes as involving “the
capacity to realize grammatical knowledge accurately and meaning in test-taking or other language-
use contexts.” Grammatical ability may (also) interact with pragmatic ability.

• Researchers at University of Michigan

- responsible for expanding grammatical construct
- develop standard examinations of English proficiency (the ECCE and ECPE):
• it is beyond the assessment of grammatical form and meaning and including
grammatical use as well.
• assessing how grammar functions at the discourse level: used of cohesion,
thematic continuity, anaphora, cataphora, grammatical focus, backgrounding and
foregrounding, etc., are measured.
• assessing students' knowledge of how sociolinguistic functions – constructing
identity, conveying politeness, displaying power, etc. are realized grammatically.

Partial Scoring
– Discrete-point test, usually rely on dichotomous scoring of grammatical accuracy
– Recently, scoring items polytomously would yield information about learners who have an
intermediary knowledge of grammar, rather than being treated as if they have no knowledge
at all.
– Dichotomous scoring raises several concerns.
considerable amount of developmental information is lost with students who have partial
knowledge
Underestimates some students' true identity.
– Partial scoring is a one step in the long-hoped-for development of an interlanguage-sensitive
approach to assessment.

The Social Dimension

– Measuring student’s ability of using language in social contexts. Importantly, this awareness
goes beyond extending the construct being measured. A social view of performance is
incompatible with the traditional view of performance as a simple projection or display of
individual competence.

The Standard
– Another issue that could be discussed under grammar teaching or testing is the issue of what
the target standard is. For instance, some researchers have claimed that English increasingly
becomes the language of communication. Once this language exists sufficiently frequently in
non-native speaker, it would become standardized and exist as the lingua franca.
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The instruction and assessment of grammar will likely continue to foment a great deal of
discussion as the field struggles with how to do both in harmony with student’s natural
learning processes. The effort is worth it for there is much at stake.

Assessing Grammar by Using Communicative Activities

Employing communication activities for teaching grammar can be a useful skill to learn and
offer variety to the students and cater to the needs of learners who are keen to develop their ability
to use English. It can be turned into a useful and even enjoyable enough experience, if real life tasks,
student problems and teacher requirements are taken into consideration. In this section, you will
learn to develop authentic assessment grammar activities, beginning with the types of tasks that
students actually need to do using the language. Grammar Assessment can then take the form of
communicative drills and communicative activities used in the teaching process. This is going to be
a meaningful yet enjoyable experience. Come on, let's start the quest to learning!

Assessing Grammar in Writing Context

The following are the steps of assessing grammar in writing context:
1. Introduce the concept of grammar form, the grammar lecture explains the rule and the
concept.
2. Have the students submit the students' response on adjective clause as their assignment
before having discussion.
3. Have the students perform the presentation, discussion, questions and response on the
material, adjective clause.
4. Get the students to do exercises such as class room test (multiple choice and fill in the
blanks)
5. Have the students write a paragraph with the particular topic involving the material
related to adjective clause (grammar in writing context as task based)
6. Get students to reword the incorrect passages to eliminate the errors. If the students look
the error up again or have him ask questions involving the correct usage in grammatical
situation.
7. Remind the students that if they ever have questions about grammar, consulting a
grammar book can be helpful. Be certain the students understand the rules that they
violated originally. Repeat this process with more than one of the students' papers or
written text.
8. Give feedback and positive washback on their writing.
9. Assess their writing by using primary trait score which the lecturer just considers the
usage and application on adjective clause.

The last, assess the students' achievement in grammar by using multiple choices test,
because it enables her to measure the effectiveness of the specific learning objective.

Assessing Grammar in Speaking Context

Teaching grammar in the context of speech is one of the grammar-based learning techniques
communicative where the technique is used to remember the new grammar topics. It can also record
their experience which has got knowledge of grammatical results used to facilitate their
communication.
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The steps of assessing grammar in speaking context as the following:

a. Assign students to collect the student response to the simple present and degrees of
comparative and superlative. As their duty before the class discussion.
b. Establish a discussion group that includes the session, que

Conclusion

Grammatical Assessment helps to enhance and improve the accuracy, fluency,

comprehension, and grammatical structure. It does not only focus on the competence, but also on
the application of the acquired knowledge on grammar. It could be done in a traditional and
authentic approach in teaching. In traditional, it could be in paper and pencil tests. In authentic, it
could be in grammatical performances. There are also other approaches on assessing the
grammatical aspect such as split sentences, sentences from pictures, picture dictation, strip story,
miming an action, and growing stories.
In conclusion, it suggests that lecturers do indeed have a set of beliefs on assessing grammar
to employ students' skill and ability to use English with respect to the construct of grammatical
sentences depicted to measure knowledge of a wide range of grammatical forms as declarative
knowledge and meanings as procedural knowledge. Also, with grammatical ability being
measured by two selected tasks – in writing and in the speaking, it is safe to say that assessing
grammar by implementing declarative and procedural knowledge provides a broad sampling of
the domain of grammatical ability, and it can develop their skills to use English.

4.3 References

Diane Larsen-Freeman. (2009, February 23). Teaching and Testing Grammar. Retrieved from:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2001). Teaching grammar. In M. Celce-Murcia (ed.), Teaching English as a

second or foreign language (3rd edn. pp. 251–66). Retrieved from:
https://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/staff/freeman/course-documents/tesfl_-
_teaching_grammar.pdf

Larsen-Freeman, Diane. (2001). Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring. Heinle &
Heinle.

Rukminingsih. (2016, January) Assessing Grammar by using Communicative Activities to Employ

Students' Skill and Ability to Use English. Providing ICTTE FKIP UNS 2015 vol.1

4.4 Acknowledgment

The images, tables, figures, and pieces of information contained in this learning packet
were taken from the references cited above.
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E V A L U A T I O N (30 points)

Name: ________________________________ Professor: _____________________________

Year Level: ____________________________ Date: _________________________________

Directions: On separate sheets of paper, answer as asked. Thereafter, attach them and the other
sheets (where you have written your answers to the earlier exercises) to this page.

Exercise 1: Match column A to B to combine and create a sentence into its proper structure and
appropriate meaning.
Column A Column B
1. If you will eat chocolate a. your mother will scold you.
2. If you will touch the dog b. the bacteria will die.
3. If you will go outside c. you will be strong.
4. If you will wash your hand d. it will bite you
5. if you will eat banana e. you will have toothache.

Exercise 2: Identify which grammatical assessment is being described by the following statements.
__________1. It can be used to measure student’s abilities in combining sentences.
__________2. Student will come up sentences from the given pictures or ask them to tell stories.
__________3. A student tries to describe the picture to other students who haven’t seen it.
__________4. It asks student to role play in a limited situation. Through acting, it can test student’s
abilities of thinking of lines.
__________5. It can be used to measure student’s ability of making sentences with different tenses.

Exercise 3. Discuss and elaborate your answer. Illustrate an example if needed.

1. Grammatical Assessment is a teaching approach that is used to measure and monitor students’
knowledge and skills on grammar. As a future educator, how are you going to holistically
assess your students’ knowledge on grammar?

2. Elaborate. The instruction and assessment of grammar will likely continue to foment a great deal of
discussion as the field struggles with how to do both in harmony with student’s natural learning
processes.

3. Again, as a future educator, how would you conduct/administer a grammar test or grammar
assessment to your students to employ their skills and ability in using English well?