TSLB 3113

LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT IN ESL

CLASSROOM
 READING STRATEGIES

BOTTOM-UP TOP-DOWN
• processing (decoding) which employs • processing of language happens when
micro-skills someone uses background information
• Treats developing reading skills as a to predict or make inferences the
sequential process. meaning of language they are going to
• Students must first learn the basics of listen to or read.
phonics and how to decode words • Scanning and skimming, guessing
before more complex skills. meaning of words from context
• Recognition & interpretation of words,
word classes, patterns, rules, cohesive
devices
PERCEPTIVE SELECTIVE

Types of Reading Task

EXTENSIVE INTERACTIVE
 PERCEPTIVE READING TASK

• most basic level of reading assessment, starting with the basic building
blocks of literacy.
• Bottom-up reading strategies is implied
• referred to as “literacy” tasks, implying that the learner is in the early stages
of becoming ‘literate’.
• fundamental tasks include recognition of alphabetic symbols, capitalized
and lowercase letters, punctuation, words, grapheme-phoneme
correspondences.
• Examples: Reading aloud, writing response, multiple choice, picture-cued,
sentence identification
 SELECTIVE READING
• A combo of bottom-up and top-down processing
• recognition of lexical, grammatical, or discourse features of language
• Expected answers include sentences, brief paragraphs, simple charts and
graphs, and brief responses as well.
• Formats including multiple-choice (form focused), matching tasks, gap-
filling, editing tasks
 INTERACTIVE READING
• process of negotiating meaning;
• More lengthy reading where the reader must interact with the text
• a combination of form-focused and meaning-focused objectives but with
more emphasis on meaning.
• Tasks include: cloze tasks, multiple choices for reading comprehension,
short-answer questions, editing tasks, scanning, ordering tasks, non-verbal
tasks for information transfer such as charts, maps, graphs, and diagrams.
EXTENSIVE READING TASK
• Involves longer complex texts that are usually read outside a
classroom hour.
• Focuses to tap into a learner’s global understanding of a text,
as opposed to asking test-takers to “zoom in” on small details
• The types of texts used:
Short stories
Books
Longer essays
Journal articles
 Tasks that can be applied in extensive reading:
RESPONDING
SKIMMING
- Students are asked to provide
- A process of rapid coverage of
his/her own opinion on the text
reading matter toCriteria for assessing
determine its a summary:
1. Express accurately the as a whole
main idea or on some issue
and
gist or main idea
supporting details within it.
2. Is written in the student’s own words;
SUMMARIZING
occasional vocabulary from the original text is
-Students needs to determine the
acceptable.
main idea and supporting details.
3. Is logically organized
Their summaries should be
written in their own words and
organized accordingly
DICTOCOMP
• Is a controlled writing that combines text dictation and text
reconstruction (composition).
• A passage is read to a class, and then the students must
write out what they understand and remember from the
passage.
• The students should not write while the teacher is reading
the paragraph. They may write only after the complete
paragraph has been read and understood.
• Requires the students to write but also demands careful
listening and retention of the material read out.
• It involves the students' ability to listen carefully, to
summarize, to elaborate, and to use English in a particular
context, the vocabulary or phrases useful in that particular
context, and to organize the material.
STRIP STORY
An activity in which every student is given a strip of paper with
one sentence (or portion of a sentence) from a story written on
it.
Each student reads out their strip and the whole class/group
then discusses and works out how the strips should be
assembled to form the correct sequence of the story.

Variation: asking the students to memorise the sentences on

their strips and then telling their sentences to the rest of the
group. The students must now re-arrange themselves, rather
than the strips, to reassemble the story
 EXAMPLE OF STRIP STORY ASSESSMENT/EXERCISE

Tiny Dinosaurs (Jane Verhoven)

The twins, Grace and Amy are
making a prehistoric world inside
a fish tank - a science project for
the school display. Put the
sentences in the boxes in the
correct order to show the steps
they follow to make the project.
THANK YOU!