CHAPTER 8:

ASSESSING
READING
Types (Genres) of Reading

■ Each genre has different rules, conventions and purposes.

Academic Job-related Personal

Reading Reading Reading
General Messages Newspapers
interest articles Schedules Recipes
Textbooks Memos Messages
Theses Reports Books
Essays Forms Financial
Papers Financial documents
Editorials documents Videogames
Opinions manuals Cellphone
Microskills, macroskills and
strategies for reading
Microskills Macroskills
Discriminate graphemes and Recognize rhetorical forms
orthographic patterns
Retain chunks of language Recognize communicative
functions
Process writing at an efficient Infer context
rate of speed
Recognize a core of words Deduce cause and effect in
events, ideas, etc.
Recognize grammatical word Distinguish between literal
classes, systems, patterns, and implied meaning
rules and elliptical forms
Particular meaning could be Detect cultural references
said different
Recognize cohesive devices in Develop strategies
written discourse and their
role in signaling the
Some principal strategies for
reading comprehension
■ Identify purpose
■ Apply spelling rules
■ Use lexical analysis to determinate meaning
■ Guess meaning.
■ Skim
■ Scan for specific information
■ Silent reading techniques for rapid processing
■ Notes
■ Distinguish between litelan and implied meaning
■ Capitalize on discourse markers to process relationships
Types of Reading
Type Characteristic
Perceptive Attends to the components of
larger stretches of discourse.
Letters, words, punctuation…
Selective Recognition of lexical,
grammatical or discourse
features
true/false, multiple choice, picture
cues
Interactive Interact with the text
Paragraphs or a page
Schemata for understanding
Extensive Pages
Global understanding
Designing assessment tasks:
perceptive reading
■ Reading aloud

■ Written response

■ Multiple choice

■ Picture cued items

Designing assessment task:
selective reading
■ Formal aspects of language (lexical, grammatical and discourse
features)
■ “Vocabulary and grammar”
■ Multiple-choice
■ Matching tasks
■ Editing tasks
■ Picture-Cued tasks
■ Gap Filling tasks
Multiple-choice
■ Practically, easy to administer and scored quickly
■ Multiple-choice
■ Contextualized multiple-choice vocabulary/grammar tasks
■ Multiple-choice cloze vocabulary/grammar task
Matching tasks
■ Respond correctly, vocabulary, alternative to traditional, easier to
construct
■ Vocabulary matching task
■ Selected response fill-in vocabulary task
Editing tasks
■ Assessing linguistic competence in reading, correct error, real world
skill
■ Multiple-choice grammar editing task
Picture-Cued tasks
■ Make identifications, understand information, complexity of the
language
■ Multiple-choice picture-cued response
■ Diagram-labeling task
Gap-Filling tasks
■ Complete an idea or part of a sentence, requires reading and
grammar, variety of responses
■ Sentence completion tasks
Designing assessment task:
Interactive reading

■ At this level, like selective task, have a combination of form-focused

and meaning focused objectives but with more emphasis on meaning.

■ Texts are a Little longer, from a paragraph to as much as a page or so

in the caseof ordinary prose.
Cloze tasks

■ One of the most popular types of Reading assessment task iss the
cloze procedure.
■ Is the ability to fill in gaps in an incomplete image (visual,auditory or
cognitive) and supply (from background schemata) omitted details.
■ Are usually a minumum of two paragraphs in length in order to
account for discourse expectancies.
■ They can be constructed relatively easily as long as the specifications for
choosing deletions and for scoring are clearly defined.

■ Typically every seventh Word (plus or minus two) is deleted (known as fixed-
radio delection), but many cloze test designers instead use a rational
delection procedure of choosing deletions according to the gramatical or
discourse functions of the words.
■ C-test the second half (according to the number of letters) of every other
word is obliterated and the test-taker must restore each word.
■ Cloze-elide procedure, inserts words into a textt that don`t belong. The test-
taker`s is to detect and cross out the “intrusive” words.
Impromptu Reading plus
comprehension questions
■ Read a passage and answer some questions.
■ Notice that this set of questions, based on a 250 Word passage, covers the
comprehension of these features:
■ Main idea (topic)
■ Expressions/idioms/phrases in context
■ Inference (implied detail)
■ Gramatical features
■ Detail (scanning for a speciafically states detail)
■ Excluding facts not written (unstated details)
■ Supporting idea
■ Vocabulary in context
■ The questions represent a simple of a test specifications for TOEFL reading
passages, with are derived from research on a variety of abilities good
readers exhibit.
Short-answer task
■ A reading passage is presented, and the test taker reads questions
that must be answered in a sentence or two Questions might cover
the same specifications indicated above fot the TOEFL reading.
Editing (Longer test)

■ 1) Authenticity incresed. The likelihood that the students in English

classroom will rea connected prose of a page or two is greater than
the likelihood of their encountering the contrived format of
unconnected sentences.
■ 2)Simulates proofreading one`s own essay, where it is imperative to
find and correct errors.
■ 3)If the test is connected to a speciic curriculum such as placement
into one of several writing courses.
Imao`s – 2001
■ Introduced one error in each numebered sentence. The test-takers
followed the same procedures for making errors
Scanning
■ Is a strategy used by all readers to find relevant information in a text.
■ Possible stimuli include:
■Scoring of such scanning task is amenable to
specificity if the initial directions are specific.
Ordering task
Information transfer: Reading
charts, maps, graphs, diagrams.

• Reading a map implies understanding of the graphic and verbal

convention of map graphics.
• Interpreting the number and of convey, clarify question, argue, and
debate, among other linguistic functions.
• Give directions
Designing assessment tasks:
Extensive reading
■ Longer texts, focus on meaning, time, emphasis on writing
■ Journal articles, technical reports, longer essays, short stories
■ Skimming, summarizing, responding to reading and note-taking
■ Skimming tasks
■ Summarizing and responding
■ Note-Taking and outlining
Skimming tasks
■ Rapid coverage of reading to determine the main idea
■ Sense of the topic and purpose of the text
■ Organization of the text, point of view and usefulness
■ Informal and formative assessments
■ Scoring: Feedback
Summarizing and responding
Note-Taking and outlining
■ Evaluation of the process of note-taking and/or outlining.
■ Informal assessment
■ Training learners to retaining information
■ Visually represented language