Assessing Reading:

In foreign language learning, reading is likewise a skill that teachers simply expect
learners to acquire.
For learners of English, two primary hurdles must be cleared to become efficient
readers. First, they need to be able to master bottom-up strategies for processing
separate letters, words, and phrases as well as top-down, conceptually driven
strategies for comprehension. Second, second language readers must develop
appropriate content and formal schemata to carry out those interpretations.
The assessment of reading ability does not end with the measurement of
comprehension, it is also important that readers use to achieve ultimate
comprehension of a text.

1) Genres of reading
Each genre of written text has its own set of governing rules and conventions. A reader
must be able to anticipate those conventions to process meaning efficiently.
- Academic reading
- Job-related reading
- Personal reading
Each genre of a text enables readers to apply certain schemata that assists them in
extracting appropriate meaning. An efficient reader also must know what their
purpose is in a text, the strategies for accomplishing that purpose, and how to retain
the information.

2) Microskills, macroskills, and strategies for reading
The skills and strategies for accomplishing reading emerge as a crucial consideration in
the assessment of reading ability. The micro and macroskills represent the spectrum of
possibilities for objectives in assessment of reading comprehension.
Microskills
1) Discriminate among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic
patterns of English.
2) Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory
3) Process writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.
4) Recognize a core of words and interpret word order patterns and their
significance.
5) Recognize grammatical word classes, systems, patterns, rules and
elliptical forms.
6) Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different
grammatical forms.
7) Recognize cohesive devices in written discourse and their role in
signaling the relationship between and among clauses.

Macroskills
1) Recognize the rhetorical conventions of written discourse and their
significance for interpretation.
2) Recognize the communicative functions of written texts, according to
form and purpose.
3) Infer context that is not explicit by activating schemata.
4) From described events, ideas, etc., infer links and connections between
events deduce causes and effects and detect such relations as main
idea, supporting idea, new information, given information,
generalization and exemplification.
5) Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
6) Detect culturally specific references and interpret them in a context of
the appropriate cultural schemata.
7) Develop and use a battery of reading strategies, such as scanning and
skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words
from context, and activating schemata for the interpretation of texts.

Some principal strategies for reading comprehension
1) Identify your purpose in reading a text.
2) Apply spelling rules, and conventions for bottom-up decoding.
3) Use lexical analysis to determine meaning.
4) Guess at meaning when you arent certain.
5) Skim the text for the gist and for main ideas.
6) Scan the text for specific information.
7) Use silent reading techniques for rapid processing.
8) Use marginal notes, outlines, charts, or semantic maps for
understanding and retaining information.
9) Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
10) Use discourse markers to process relationships.

3) Types of reading
A) Perceptive: involves attending to the components of a larger stretches of
discourse: letters, words, punctuation, and other graphemic symbols.
Bottom-up processing is implied here.

- These tasks are seen as literacy tasks, implying that the learner is in the early
stages of becoming a literate.

- Examples:

1) Reading Aloud: the test-taker sees separate letters, words, and/or short
sentences and reads them aloud, one by one, in the presence of an
administrator. Any recognizable oral approximation of the target response is
considered correct.

2) Written Response: the test-takers task is to reduce the probe in writing.
Evaluation of test-takers response must be carefully treated. If an error occurs,
you must determine its source.

3) Multiple-choice: include same/different, circle the answer, true/false, choose
the latter and matching. Some possibilities are:

Minimal pair distinction
Grapheme recognition task

4) Picture-cued items: test-taker are shown a picture along with a written text
and are given one of a number of possible tasks to perform. Sub-categories:

Picture-cued word identification
Picture-cued sentence identification
Picture-cued true/false sentence identification
Picture-cued matching word identification
Multiple-choice picture-cued word identification



B) Selective: to assess ones reading recognition of lexical, grammatical or
discourse features of language, picture-cued tasks, matching, true/false,
multiple-choice, etc., are used, including sentences, brief paragraphs, and
simple charts and graphics. A combination of bottom-up and top-down
processing may be used.

- It focus on formal aspects of language. Lexical and grammatical aspects of
language are simply the forms we use to perform all four of the skills of
listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

- Examples:

1) Multiple-choice (for form-focused criteria): serve to check vocabulary or
grammar items, as they usually have little context.

Multiple-choice vocabulary/grammar tasks
Contextualized multiple-choice vocabulary/grammar tasks
Multiple-choice cloze vocabulary/grammar task

2) Matching tasks: the test-taker is simply to respond correctly. The most
frequently appearing criterion in matching procedures is vocabulary.

Vocabulary matching task

3) Editing tasks: is widely used to test grammar or rhetorical errors when
assessing linguistic competence in reading. Not only focuses on grammar but
also introduces a simulation of the authentic task of editing, or discerning
errors in written passages.

Multiple-choice grammar editing task

4) Picture-cued tasks: pictures and photographs may be equally utilized
examining ability at the selective level.
a) Test-takers read a sentence or passage and choose one of four pictures that
is being described. The sentence (or sentences) at this level is more
complex.
Multiple-choice picture-cued response

b) Test-takers read a series of sentences or definitions, each describing a
labeled part of a picture or diagram. Their task is to identify each labeled
item.
Diagram-labeling task

5) Gap-filling tasks: the test-takers response is to write a word or phrase. An
extension of simple gap-filling is to create sentence-completion items in which
test-taker read part of a sentence and then complete it by writing a phrase.
Sentence completion tasks



C) Interactive: typical genres are anecdotes, short narratives and
descriptions, between others. The reader is supposed to interact with the
text by identifying relevant features within short texts with the objective of
retaining the information that is processed. Top-down process is typical of
these tasks, though sometimes bottom-up performance may be necessary.

- Tasks at this level have a combination of form-focused and meaning-focused
objectives but with more emphasis on meaning. Interactive tasks imply a little
more focus on top-down processing; texts are a bit longer; charts, graphs, and
other graphics may be somewhat complex in their format.

- Examples:

1) Cloze tasks: this concept comes from the Gestalt psychological concept of
2closure, that is the ability to fill in gaps in an incomplete image and supply
omitted details.
In written language, a sentence with a word left out should have enough
context that the reader can close that gap by guessing, using linguistic
expectancies (formal schemata), background experience (content schemata)
and some strategic competence.
In these tasks, every seventh word (plus or minus two) is deleted: fixed-ratio
deletion; but other cloze-test designers use a rational deletion procedure of
choosing according to the grammatical or discourse functions of the words.
Two approaches are commonly used: the exact word scoring method gives
credit to test-takers only if the insert the exact word that was originally deleted; the
appropriate word scoring, gives credits for supplying any word that is grammatically
corrects and makes good sense in the context.

Cloze procedure, fixed-ratio deletion
Cloze procedure, rational deletion
C-test procedure (here the second half of every word is obliterated and
the test-taker must restore each word)
Cloze-elide procedure

2) Impromptu Reading plus Comprehension Questions: the questions are
consistent with strategies of effective reading: skimming, scanning, guessing
word meaning in context, inferencing, using discourse markers, etc.

3) Short-answer tasks: a reading passage is presented, and the test-taker reads
questions that must be answered in written form, in a sentence or two.

Open-ended reading comprehension questions

4) Editing (longer texts): advantages: authenticity is increased; the task
simulates proofreading ones own essay; if the test is connected to a specific
curriculum, the test designer can draw up specifications for a number of
grammatical and rhetorical categories that match the content of the courses.

Contextualized grammar editing tasks

5) Scanning: is a strategy used by all readers to find relevant information in a
text. Assessment is carried out by presenting test-takers with a text and asking for
rapid identification of relevant information.

6) Ordering Tasks: can serve as an assessment of overall global understanding of
a story and the cohesive devices that signal the order of events or ideas.

Sentence-ordering tasks

7) Information transfer: reading charts, maps, graphs, diagrams: it is
presupposed that the reader has an appropriate schemata for interpreting
them. Often are accompanied by oral or written discourse to convey, clarify,
question, argue, and debate.


D) Extensive: applied to the longer texts, including professional articles,
essays, technical reports, short stories and books. The purpose is to tap into
a learners global understanding of a text. Top-down processing is assumed
for most extensive tasks.

- A number of tasks described before can also apply here, like: impromptu
reading plus comprehension questions, short-answer tasks, editing, scanning,
ordering, information transfer, interpretation.

- Examples:

1) Skimming tasks: skimming is the process of rapid coverage of reading matter
to determine its gist or main idea. It is a prediction strategy used to give a
reader a sense of the topic and purpose of the text, the organization, the
authors point of view, etc. Responses can be oral or written, depending on the
context. Most assessment are informal and formative.

2) Summarizing and responding: the test-taker is asked to read a text and write a
summary.

Directions for summarizing

Evaluating summaries can be difficult; Imao (2001) used four criteria for
evaluating them:
a) Expresses accurately the main idea and supporting ideas
b) Is written in the students own words; occasionally vocabulary from
the original text is acceptable
c) Is logically organized
d) Displays facility in the use of language to clearly express ideas in the
text.

Directions for responding to reading
Scoring is difficult because of the subjectivity of determining accurate reflection of the
article itself. A holistic scoring system for this type of assessment may be feasible:
3: demonstrates clear, unambiguous comprehension of the main and
supporting ideas
2: demonstrates comprehension of the main idea but lacks comprehension of
some supporting ideas
1: demonstrates only a partial comprehension of the main and supporting ideas
0: demonstrates no comprehension of the main and supporting ideas

3) Notetaking and outlining: learners gain in retaining information through
marginal notes that highlight key information or organizational outlines that
put supporting ideas into a visually manageable framework.