Techniques for Assessing

Reading Skills and Vocabulary

 The Many Strands that are Woven into Skilled Reading
(Scarborough, 2001)

LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION Skilled Reading- fluent

BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE coordination of word
reading, fluency and
VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE SKILLED READING:
comprehension processes
fluent execution and
LANGUAGE STRUCTURES coordination of word
recognition and text
VERBAL REASONING comprehension.
LITERACY KNOWLEDGE

WORD RECOGNITION
PHONIC. AWARENESS

DECODING (and SPELLING)

SIGHT RECOGNITION

Reading is a multifaceted skill, gradually acquired over years of instruction and practice.
 Skills Involved in Reading

1. Associating graphic symbols with sounds and

words
2. Understanding relationships between pieces of
information in a sentence, including elements
3. Deducing meanings of words from their roots and
affixes
4. Deducing meanings of words from the context
 Skills Involved in Reading

5. Understanding relationships among parts of the

text, signaled by such devices as lexical devices
(synonyms, repetition, etc.), anaphoric reference
(pronouns) and connectives (because, therefore)
6. Understanding temporal and spatial relationships
7. Understanding relationships such as cause and
effect; generalization and example; comparison;
contrast; and opinion and support
8. Anticipating what will come next
 Skills Involved in Reading

10. Identify the main idea and supporting details

11. Understanding figurative language
12. Understanding inferences
13. Skimming (getting an overall idea of the passage)
14. Scanning (looking for specific information )
15. Reading critically
16. Varying reading strategies according to the type of
text and the purpose of reading
Assessment Decisions

 When considering vocabulary / reading skills and how

to test it, teachers often ask themselves the following
questions:
– How should I test vocabulary reading skills?
– Which kind of vocabulary / reading skills should I
test?
– Which format(s) should I use?
– How many items should I include?
– Types of question (literal, inferential, lexical)
– How important is context?
 Assessing Reading
* Assessment Anchors*

 Must reflect classroom instruction

 Use interactive tasks to provide context for

learning

 Standardized tests do not always provide

context or language support
 Inappropriate Assessments

 Problems with current tests

– Heavy language load

– Out of context
 How should I test vocabulary?
 Deciding how we test vocabulary is related to how we teach it.
– Students should not simply memorize long lists
– Instead present vocabulary in context
– When testing vocabulary, avoid testing words in isolation.

 Another decision teachers have to make is whether to test it

discretely or embedded in other skill areas.
– discrete vocabulary testing assesses a word as an independent
construct (Read, 2000)
 looks at assessing a student’s knowledge at the word level
– embedded vocabulary testing looks at vocabulary as part of a
larger construct.
 looks at the students’ use of vocabulary as it pertains to a
text that the student has produced such as a written essay or
spoken text.
 Which kind of vocabulary
should I test?

– which words do you expect your students

to recognize (i.e., their passive or
receptive vocabulary)
– which words do you expect them to use
(i.e. their active or productive vocabulary)
(Heaton, 1990: 79).

 Research shows that learners can recognize

more words than they can actually use.
Discrete Feature Test

 If you want to test vocabulary explicitly, the

first thing you need to determine is whether
you want to assess recognition or production.

 Common formats for assessing vocabulary

recognition
– multiple-choice questions (MCQs)
– matching
Holistic Feature Test

 The use of various sub- skills to

comprehend a text
 Testing one's ability to recognize,
analyze and interpret features of a
comprehension text
 Tasks to Test Low Level Skills

 Word recognition

 Sentence recognition

 Word and picture matching

 Word and sentence comprehension

Tasks for Middle and Higher Level Students

 True/False Questions
 Multiple-choice questions
 Short answer/completion questions
 Summary
 Information transfer
 Techniques for particular purposes
- identifying order of events or arguments
- identifying referents
- guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words
from context
 Average Response Time

Item Type Duration

True-false 30 seconds
Multiple-choice and Multiple- 60 – 90 seconds
answer
Matching and Ordering 30 seconds per response
Short Answer 120 seconds
Completion 60 seconds
Essay 10 – 30 minutes
Read this text and answer the questions.

The dragona tree, which is common in the dry

regions of Africa, has an unusual appearance.
The fully-grown dragona is about twenty feet tall
and has a thin trunk, about nine inches across.
The trunk is bare for most of its height and the
spiky branches, which have many leaves, stand
out from the top of the trunk, giving the tree the
appearance of a large brush stuck in the ground.
Read this text and answer the questions.

The dragona tree has many uses. In

October it produces large round fruit with
yellow flesh inside which can be eaten raw or
made into a refreshing drink. The flesh can
also be dried and made into flour. The outer
skin of the fruit can be used for making glue;
first it is dried, then the skin is pounded and
mixed with water to make the glue. The bark
of the tree is made up of fibres of great
strength which are used to make ropes. And
the spiky branches can be hollowed out and
used as musical pipes.
 Question Types???

Read the following statements.

Write T for true, F for false.

a) The dragona tree grows in Africa.

b) The dragona is common in rain forests.
c) The dragona produces fruit twice a year.
d) The flesh of the fruit can be used as
medicine.
 Choose the correct answer.

The dragona tree is

A. found in sandy regions.

B. common in parts of Africa.
C. common throughout the world.
D. unusual in dry regions of the world.
Give short answers to these questions.

1) What does the dragona fruit look like?

2) The fruit has four uses. What are they?

3) Why is the bark good for making ropes?

Complete this table.

Part of tree Use

a) flesh of fruit food, drink, flour

b) skin of fruit
 Cloze test

Cloze Tests are reading passages with

the blanks representing words that are
deleted from the original text; the
blanks are to be filled in by the reader.
 Types of Cloze Test

a. Fixed Ratio Cloze or Nth word deletion

 Words are deleted systematically by counting
off, regardless of the part of speech.

b. Rational Deletion Cloze

 Words are deleted by part of speech or
content area vocabulary.

c. Maze Technique
 Three word choices are provided at each
missing word interval.
 Information-Transfer Test

 The students’ task is to identify in

the target text the required
information and then to transfer it,
often in some transposed form, on
to a table or map.
 The Summary Test

 Students read a text and then are required

to summarize the main ideas, either of the
whole text or of a part, or those ideas in
the text that deal with a given topic. It is
believed that students need to understand
the main ideas of the texts, to separate
relevant from irrelevant ideas, to organize
their thoughts about the text and so on, in
order to be able to do the task
satisfactorily.
 Multiple-choice Questions
Advantages

– they are very reliable because if written

well, there is only one correct answer.
– they are quick and easy to mark and
thereby deemed very practical from a
teacher’s perspective.
– they can be used to assess knowledge at
various levels from beginning to advanced.
– students from most parts of the world are
familiar with the format.
 MCQs: Disadvantages

– MCQs do not lend themselves to the

testing of productive language skills or
language as communication.
– The ability to test primarily recognition
knowledge restricts what can be tested
with this format (Coombe, Folse &
Hubley, 2007).
 Short-Answer Items

 Advantages:
– Easy to construct
– Excellent format for measuring who, what, when,
and where information.
– Guessing is minimized
– Student must know the material- rather than
simply recognize the answer
 Disadvantages:
– Grading can be time consuming
– More than one answer can be correct
 True-False Test Items

 Advantages:
– Sample a large amount of learning
per unit of student testing time
 Disadvantages:
– Tends to be very easy
– 50-50 chance of guessing
Assessing Vocabulary in Reading
Comprehension

 Which word in paragraph 3 means danger?

 Which word in paragraph 6 means the same thing as
fun?
 Find the word(s) in the text that means the same
thing as hundreds of years.
 Find a word(s) in the text that describes the way the
author was feeling.
 What does the word they in paragraph 2 refer to?
Assessing Vocabulary in Reading
Comprehension

 What does the phrase “talking nonsense” (line

10) probably mean?

– speaking in a crazy way

– stating an obvious fact
– discussing feelings about something
– saying something that does not make
sense
 Thinking Skills

 What level of learning corresponds to the

course content
 Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
– Knowledge
– Comprehension
– Application
– Analysis
– Synthesis
– Evaluation
 Question Types verses
Cognitive Levels of Learning

Knowledge Application Analysis

Comprehension Synthesis
Evaluation
Multiple Choice (MC) MC MC
True/False (TF) Short Answer Short Answer
Matching Problems Essay
Completion Essay
Short Answer Performance
 Tutorial Task

In groups discuss;

 What are the techniques of assessing

vocabulary in reading comprehension?
 Techniques of assessing Reading and Writing
Skills in the primary ESL classroom.
 What is meant by discrete feature test and
holistic feature test? Provide examples to
support your answer.