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Testing reading comprehension, Ashley Sealtiel Dominguez Puga Melissa De…
Testing reading comprehension
The nature of the reading skills
Reading skills have been pushed into the background in an attempt to develop oral fluency skills.
Reading comprehension test materials is very closely related to the type of practice material used by the teacher to develop the reading skills
Speaking: reconise words and words groups, associating sounds with their correspoding graphic symbols.
Intensive and extensive reading
Shorts reading extracts of a demorate degree of dificulty and containing features which merit detailed study form a basis for
Intesive reading practice
Whole articles, chapters and books are used for
Extensive reading practice
The inclusion of such types of texts will not provide a more realistic and reliable means of assessment but will also help to motivate students by demostrating how the target language is used in real-life situations
There are many types od testing reading comprehesion, ranging from multiple-choice items to open-ended questions.
Initial stages of reading: matching tests
Word and sentence recognition.
Ability to discriminate visually between words which are spelt in fairly similar ways
Word recognition speed
Word matching: the testees are required to draw a line under the word which is the same as the word on the left
Sentence matching: the testees are required to recognise as quickly as posible sentences which consist of the same words in the same order, only one of which is exactly the same as the previous one
Pictures and sentence matching: will concentrate on word and sentence comprehesion, using pictures to test this skill
Intermediate and advanced stages of reading: matching tests
Type 1: testees are required to match the meaning of certain terms in a dictionary with the appropiate shapes which those terms denote
Type 2: The item is intented for use at fairly advanced level
Type 3: testees are required to match appropiate words or information in the text with the correct parts of a diagram
Type 4: involves the matching of a paraphrase of phrases and sentences in a text with the original words in the text. Each item start with:
Instead of
True/False reading tests
Is one of the most widely used tests of reading comprehension.
The scores obtained by the testees can be very reliable indices of reading comprehesion
For inclusion in class progress tests chiefly because they can be constructed easily and quickly
Two main disadvantages:
1:
it can encourage guessing since testees have 50 percent chance of giving a correct answer for each item.
2:
the test may fail to discriminate widely enough among the testees unless the are a lot of items
Must be clear and concise as possible
Multiple-choice items (A): short texts
Type 1: Comprehension of the texts is generally of at least as much importance as an understanding of the meaning of the words for selection
Type 2: Test of comprehesion of grammatical structure, required identify the correct paraphrase of a statement from a choice of four or five.
Type 3: very short reading extract of only a few sentences. The testees are required to answer only one comprehension test item on each reading passage
Multiple-choice items (B): longer texts
Useful way of testing reading comprehension. The extent to which a test is successful in measuring what it sets out to mesure depends largely on the effectiveness of each of the items used.
The text should contain the type of reading task which will be demanded of the testees in later real-life situation
The lenght of the reading extract recommended might vary from 50 to 100 words at the elementary level, 200 to 300 words at the intermediate level, and 400 to 600 words at the advanced level
The extract selected should be capable of providing the basis for a sufficient number of multiple-choice comprehension items.
The difficulty level of the text should coincide with the level of the students profiency in English
The reading matter used outside the test situation should be selected for enjoyment.
When writing test items based on a reading text, the tester should attempt to construct more items than the number actually required.
Is useful include items testing the studends ability to recognise reference features in a text
Completion items
Completion items require the testees to supply a word or a short phrase.
Type 1: consisting of blanks for completion in the items following the text
Can become merely a matching exercise in which the words and phrases required in the completion are determined after a process of matching whole item with the appropiate parte of the text
Less emphasis is placed on the writing skills in such a test than in a test consisting in opened questions
Type2: Consisting of blanks in the text itself
Most significant content words
Rearrangement items
Testing the ability to understand a sequence of steps in a process or events in a narrative
Type 1: Takes the form of jumbled sentences which the students have to 'unscramble' an arrange in the correct order.
The jumbled sentences are based on reading comprehesion text and should be unscrambled in the light of the information contained in the text.
Cloze procedure
The words are delated sistematically, the construction of a cloze text is purely mechanical.
The interval at which words are delated is usually between ever fifth and every tenth word.
Was originally intented to measure the reading difficulty level of a text
Open-ended and miscellaneous items
Those questions which elicit a completely subjective response on the part of the testees
Items which require answer in senteces
The test writer should remember to let the text itself determine the types of items set
May be followed by one ot two multiply choice items, several true/false items, a few completion items and one or two open/ended items
Cursory reading
Skills involved in reading quickly, skimming and scanning.
in test of reading speed the students are generally given limited time in which to read the text
Ashley Sealtiel Dominguez Puga
Melissa De la Orta Serralde