Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension

ALEX KOZULINa and ERICA GARBb

»The International Center for the Enhancement of Learning
Potential, Israel and "Hebreui University, Israel

ABSTRACT The goal of this article is to explore the feasibility of the

development and implementation of the dynamic assessment proce-
dure in such curriculum-based areas as English as a foreign language
(EFL). Vygotsky's notion of the Zone of Proximal Development and
Feuerstein's concept of Mediated Learning Experience served as a
theoretical base for the construction of the assessment procedure. The
procedure included a pre-test, mediated learning phase and a post-test.
It was applied with a group of 23 academically at-risk students who
failed to pass the high school English exam. The results of the study
indicate that dynamic procedure indeed provides information on stu-
dents' learning potential over and beyond that which is available from
the static test. This information can be used for the development of
individual learning plans attuned to the students' special learning
needs.

Dynamic vs, static assessment

There seems to be a certain inherent contradiction between the goals of
student assessment and its means. The goal is usually to evaluate the
students' learning ability and to gain information useful for more
effective instruction. The means, however, are often limited to measur-
ing the students' current performance level. This contradiction becomes
particularly salient in the case of standardized psychometric tests that
measure students' cognitive performance but are then used for the
prediction of their learning ability and future achievements. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the initial as well as some of the current

Please address correspondence to: Alex Kozulin, The International Center for
the Enhancement of Learning Potential, 47 Narkis Street, PO Box 7755,
Jerusalem 91077, Israel. Email: AKozulin@Compuserve.com

Copyright© 2002 SAGEPublications (London,

School Psychology International
Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol. 23(1): 112-127. [0143-0343 (200202)
23:1; 112-127; 021733)

112

from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

,A _

Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension

criticisms of psychometric tests focus on the wisdom of using psychomet-
ric tests for prediction instead of attempting a direct assessment of the
students' learning ability (Kozulin and Falik, 1995; Lidz, 1987). Why
should one use a questionable correlation between the intelligence
measures and the future achievements if it is possible to assess the
students' learning ability directly?
This question was raised as early as 1934 by a Swiss psychologist,
Andre Rey. He proposed basing the evaluation of students' abilities on
directly observable learning processes. Using as a model a non-verbal
positional learning task, Rey showed that registration of the sequence of
consecutive trails not only provides information about the students'
learning ability, but also the change in their strategy. Rey thus intro-
duced two important aspects of dynamic assessment: process orientation
and experimental component within the testing situation.
An even more far-reaching concept oflearning potential assessment
was proposed by Vygotsky (1934/1986; see also Kozulin, 1998; Minick,
1987). Vygotsky believed that the normal learning situation for a
student is a socially meaningful cooperative activity. New cognitive
functions and learning abilities originate within this interpersonal
interaction and only later are internalized and transformed, becoming
the student's inner cognitive processes. Thus, under conditions of
collaborative or assisted performance students may reveal certain emer-
gent functions that have not yet been internalized. According to Vygotsky
these functions belong to the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in
counter-distinction to fully developed functions that belong to the Zone
of Actual Development. While the results ofthe static testing show us the
already existent abilities of the student, the analysis ofZPD allows us to
evaluate the ability of the student to learn from the interaction with a
teacher or more competent peer. This learning ability may serve as a
better predictor ofthe students' educational needs than the static scores.
Vygotsky suggested charting individual ZPD's by comparing the stu-
dents' performance under solitary conditions with their performance
during the assisted problem solving. He mentioned the whole range of
possible interactive interventions to be used during ZPD assessment,
such as asking leading questions, modelling, starting to solve the tasks
and asking students to continue and so on, but he produced no standard-
ized procedure for the ZPD assessment. Vygotsky thus introduced the
following parameters of dynamic assessment: interactivity, emphasis on
developing functions and the gain score based on comparison of the
results of aided and independent performance.
For a variety of social, political and scientific reasons the notion of
dynamic assessment received relatively little attention in the period
from the 1930s to the 1960s. The renewed interest appeared only in the
late 1960s on the wave ofthe critique of standard psychometric tests. The

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 School Psychology International (2002), Vol. 23(1)
first fully operationalized versions of dynamic cognitive assessment
were developed by Budoff and Friedman (1964) and Feuerstein and
Shalom (1968). The dynamic assessment tasks themselves were similar
to those used in standard psychometric tests but the assessment proce-
dure was radically changed to include a learning phase. The whole
philosophy of assessment has also been changed. For example, the
Feuerstein et al. (1979) version of dynamic assessment was based on the
following theoretical assumptions:
(1) The students' cognitive processes are highly modifiable. The task of
assessment is to ascertain the degree of modifiability rather than
the manifest level of functioning;
(2) The reduced modifiability is the result of insufficient type or
amount of mediated learning experience (MLE) received by a
student;
(3) Dynamic assessment, which includes a mediated learning phase,
provides better insight into students' learning capacity than
unaided performance;
(4) The evaluator plays an active role by mediating cognitive strategies
during the learning phase;
(5) The goal of dynamic assessment is to reveal the students' learning
potential and to formulate optimal educational intervention (see
Kozulin and Falik, 1995).
Two aspects of Feuerstein's dynamic assessment are particularly
important for the present discussion. His selection of assessment tasks
was based on the assumption that while students' performance on some
tasks depends on more conservative functions such as prior knowledge,
memory or highly automatized skills, performance on other tasks is
more flexible and modifiable, and depends more on students' cognitive
strategies. For the purpose of dynamic assessment one should therefore
select only the latter group of tasks, i.e. only those problems whose
solution depends on the use of cognitive strategies.
The role of the evaluator, according to Feuerstein, is to identify the
students' problems during the pre-test and to provide the necessary
mediation during the learning phase. The concept ofMLE (Feuerstein,
1990) specifically addresses such issues as the evaluator's sensitivity to
students' questions and responses, the transfer of principles beyond a
here-and-now given task and mediation of the meaning of the assess-
:.I>""~"-l:i!s,ituation.
Only if all these criteria are met may the situation
quality as an MLE-based dynamic assessment.
s well as MLE-based assessments, a whole group of dynamic cogni-
tive assessment techniques is currently available. What unites all those
approaches is their reliance on the test-teach-test paradigm (Campione
1996; Haywood and Tzuriel, 1992). At the same time the goals of

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Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension

different dynamic assessment techniques vary considerably. Some of
them are presented as an alternative to standard psychometric proce-
dures, while others appear as complementary techniques to be used in
addition to static tests. MLE-based assessments focus on the on-going
analysis of the students' learning needs and reject the goal of prediction,
while so-called learning tests developed in Germany (see Guthke and
Stein, 1996) claim to have a better predictive value than static tests.
There are also differences in the assessment procedure, with some
dynamic tests including standardized rules oflearning intervention and
others requiring a fair amount of initiative on the part of the evaluator.
There is a considerable amount of confusion regarding the psychometric
properties of dynamic assessment (Grigorenko and Sternberg, 1998).
More radical defenders of dynamic assessment, like Feuerstein, claim
that the difference in goals make standard psychometric properties,
such as reliability and validity, irrelevant in the case of dynamic
assessment. Moderates accept the need for establishing psychometric
properties, but warn against automatic transfer of standard features to
the situation of interactive assessment that is closer to classroom
learning or individual tutoring than to static testing. One of the criti-
cisms aimed at both dynamic and static cognitive tests is their poor
correlation with students' needs in such specific areas as reading and
maths, which implies -that the existence of dynamic cognitive assess-
ment does not replace a domain-specific evaluation. Such an evaluation,
however, should not necessarily follow a standard content-based path
but may include elements oflearningpotential assessment elaborated in
the dynamic cognitive tests (see Cioffi and Carney, 1983; Kletzien and
Bednar, 1990).

Changing perspectives in content learning

During the last two decades the concept of students' cognition has
undergone a serious modification, as also has the concept of content
learning (see Kozulin, 1998: Chapter 7). In the past, content learning
was perceived predominantly as a transfer ofinformation and rules from
the teacher to students. Regular school students were presumed to be
cognitively ready to receive any age-appropriate information. Thus the
question of cognitive functions was invoked only in relation to special
needs students or when one discussed the readiness of pre-school
children for regular school study. The new concept of content learning
has a much stronger link to the process of students' cognitive develop-
ment (Burden and Williams, 1998). On the one hand the process of
content acquisition depends to a considerable extent on cognitive strat-
egies available for the students; on the other hand, content learning
contributes to the development of students' general thinking skills.

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For example, new approaches in science teaching present the learning
process as leading to a conceptual change (Driver et al., 1985). Students'
intuitive concepts of natural phenomena undergo modification and
change under the influence of their learning experience. Thus content
learning is conceived as a process of change in the students' thinking
about nature. To produce such a change, it is not enough to simply
present scientific concepts to the students. Students should be taught
how to think scientifically. At the same time, some authors (Adey, 1999)
claim that if students are given proper 'thinking science' activities, the
outcomes will be positive not only in science knowledge but also in more
general thinking abilities.
A somewhat similar process can be observed in mathematical instruc-
tion. The process of maths teaching is no longer seen as a mere
transmission of operations, rules and standard algorithms for solving
standard problems, but rather as a constructive, interactive and reflec-
tive practice of developing and applying maths concepts (Nelissen,
1999).
In reading instruction, researchers have been coming to similar
conclusions. That reading is not a passive, but rather an active, and in
fact an interactive process, has been recognized for some time (Goodman,
1967; Rumelhart, 1977; Smith, 1971). Current theories regard reading
as an active process in which the reader constructs meaning from text
cues, calling upon knowledge of language, text structure, conventions,
content concepts, etc. This knowledge is organized in the reader's mind
in schemas, which are activated when a good reader approaches a text
(Carrel, 1984).
Activating or constructing a schema includes arriving at a coherent
explanation of the relations between elements in a discourse, and thus
knowledge of text structure is a key feature. The distinction between a
text and unrelated sentences is one of cohesion, (Halliday and Hasan,
1976) including elements such as reference, substitution, ellipsis, con-
junction and lexical cohesion. Other textural features which influence
comprehension include awareness of the arrangement of ideas in texts,
i.e. the rhetorical and logical organization, vocabulary, syntax, clarity of
author's intentions and readers' familiarity with the content. Salient
findings from the research indicate that readers can optimize their
comprehension by becoming aware of the text structures and the
resultant effect they have on learning. By detecting the organizational
patterns of texts, students can observe how authors arrange ideas and
which kind of structures are used to interrelate ideas.
A significant implication for curriculum development that the re-
search suggests is that knowledge precedes control, and thatmetacognition
ofthe above factors can therefore optimize their influence (Armbruster et
al., 1983). Thus reading involves both knowledge - of strategies for

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Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension

understanding texts, differing demands of various reading chores,
textual structures, one's own strengths and weaknesses - and control.
Successful readers monitor their reading, plan strategies, adjust
effort appropriately and evaluate the success oftheir on-going efforts to
understand. The process is essentially inferential, in other words,
readers must be able to 'reason' about text material during reading.
Research indicates that direct instruction in techniques that involve
students in actively reasoning about texts improves comprehension
(Baker, 1983; Brown et al., 1981; Garner and Kraus, 1982; Markman and
Gorin, 1981; Myers and Paris, 1978; Paris et al., 1983).
In the last few years, research has therefore centred on adding
metacognitive elements to curriculum development, since researchers
consistently posit that metacognition plays an important - indeed vital
- role in reading (Armbruster, 1983; Baker and Brown, 1984a,b; Brown
et aI., 1981; 1983; 1986; Baker et al., 1986; Flavell and Wellman, 1977).
Research on comprehension strategies took on greater importance in
the 1980s. In a landmark study, Palinscar and Brown (1984) suggested
that strategy instruction has the potential of being an effective approach
to improving comprehension in L1 readers. Garner (1987) indicates that
self-awareness and control oflearning to read for comprehension can be
taught through the acquisition of cognitive strategies and suggests
certain guidelines for those attempting classroom implementation of the
strategy instruction success described in the literature:

(a) Teachers must devote time to the processes involved in reading and
learning. Brown (1981) is only one of many analysts to have noted
that product rather than process is stressed in most traditional
classrooms. In order to stress processes, the covert cognitive and
metacognitive processes must first be rendered into overt form, i.e.
suitable materials must be devised;
(b) Teachers must do task analyses of strategies to be taught. Garner
suggests that strategic problem-solving activities be examined and
strategies broken down into global steps;
(c) Teachers must demonstrate a variety of situations in which learn-
ers might profitably use the strategies taught and transfer to these
situations must be explicitly taught.

Clay (1993) was another pioneer of the cognitive approach. Her

method of 'reading recovery' focuses on identifying and teaching stu-
dents the effective strategies of reading. These strategies include
inferencing, identifying important information, monitoring one's own
performance, summarizing and question-generating.
One piece of research which highlights the importance of strategy
training is that of Dole et al. (1996). The group which received strategy

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training outperformed other groups when asked to read selections on
their own, without the teachers' support, pointing to the transfer value
of teaching students to become independent learners. This study, like
earlier ones, (Palinscar and Brown, 1984; Wong, 1985) shows that lower
achievers benefit particularly from learning specific strategies. In addi-
tion, the research indicated that strategies could compensate for lack of
background knowledge. Although the experimental group was not given
advance background knowledge provided to other groups, this did not
place them at a serious disadvantage.
"

Cognitive approach to EFL teaching and learning

Similar research in English as a Foreign Language learning has repli-
cated the major findings ofLl reading research. Clarke and Silberstein
(1977) concluded that second language (L2) learners needed to be taught
strategies cognitively in order to read more efficiently, strategies such as
guessing from context, defming expectations, making inferences from
the text, skimming ahead to fill in the contexts, etc. Coady (1979)
reinterpreted Goodman's model (1967) into a model more specifically
suited to L2 learners and identified three components of the reading
process: process strategies, background knowledge and conceptual abili-
ties. The goal should be to provide students with a range of effective
approaches to texts. Carrel (1984; 1988; 1989) demonstrated that train-
ing L2 students in strategies for recognizing the organizational struc-
ture of texts resulted in improved comprehension and pointed out some
interesting specific differences between L1 and L2learners: for example,
for L2 students, awareness of the more specific logical patterns of
organization such as cause-effect, compare and contrast and problem-
solution improve comprehension, indicating that strategy awareness
might be even more important for L2learners. The implications for EFL
curriculum development are that students need to develop strategies
which can be generalized to all texts. An example of such a curriculum
is one developed by Garb and Kozulin (1998) for adult learners at pre-
academic centres in Israel. Each unit focuses on a general problem-
solving strategy, includes more specific language learning strategies,
and provides EFL content material with which to practice, integrate and
gain insight into both the general and specific strategies.
It is fairly obvious that if the goals and methods ofEFL instruction are
oriented toward a cognitive model, the evaluation of EFL learning
should be appropriately redesigned. It would make no sense to check the
students' rote memory of words or rules, if the instruction was aimed at
developing in them effective strategies for text comprehension that
would not be completely handicapped by insufficient vocabulary or a
forgotten rule. A dynamic assessment ofEFL text comprehension should

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 Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension
therefore assess the student's ability to learn, activate and use effective
strategies for text comprehension.

Methodology of dynamic EFL assessment

A dynamic EFL assessment was designed and tested in a population of
young adults (18-25) at a number of pre-academic centres in Israel (Garb
and Kozulin, 1999), using the test-teach-test paradigm described above.
The students would first be given a static test. The teacher would then
review the test with the students, mediating for them the strategies
required in each item, building together with the students process
models for each item, and indicating how strategies can be transferred
from one task to another. A re-test would indicate how individual
students benefited or did not benefit from the mediation. This re-test
would be given soon after the mediation, to avoid interference from
classroom learning.
Stage 1. The pre-test. The pre-test was adapted from a standard test
used for EFL placement purposes in pre-academic centres at colleges
and universities in Israel. The original test consisted of nine sections,
three of which dealt with vocabulary recognition or production. These
items were eliminated, since success in these items depended purely on
prior knowledge. The test now reflected more accurately the nature of
real text-comprehension tasks demanded for EFL academic reading, i.e.
tasks requiring text comprehension amenable to the use of cognitive
strategies. The six remaining items were analysed in order to determine
(a) what basic information was needed and (b) what strategies should be
used for successful completion.
Stage 2. The mediation process. Based on the above analysis, very
detailed guidelines were designed to enable teachers to mediate each of
the items in an interactive way and to ensure that mediation was
consisten t from teacher to teacher. The students' own corrected pre-tests
were used for mediation, and collected again after the mediation. The
mediation was divided into two stages: Part 1 (items A and B of the
assessment), involve manipulation of grammatical, lexical and sentence
structure conventions. An 'information page' was constructed for stu-
dents to take home and revise, providing the basic lexical and grammati-
cal information they would need: question words, the auxiliary verbs 'to
be' and 'to do', both in the negative and positive and the Subject-Verb-
Complement (SVC) structure of normative sentences and question
forms. Part 2 includes four texts, increasing in length and complexity,
with questions designed to test comprehension. The strategies mediated
in stage 2 focus on using text structure, cohesion devices and background
knowledge to elicit meaning from texts and questions. Each mediation
stage requires approximately 50 minutes.

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Stage 3. Re-test. A second test was designed, where each item
matched that of the pre-test with regard to information, strategies,
length and level of difficulty. Both tests were piloted without mediation
at one of the pre-academic centres. Student scores on all items were
almost identical, indicating that the second test was equivalent to the
first.

Procedure
The entire pre-test was given to the students. The maximum time
allowed was 90 minutes. Dictionaries were not allowed, so that students
would need to rely for word meaning on strategies such as prediction
and hypothesis. Mediation and re-testing were done in two stages, since
the pilot experiment indicated that this population of students was
unable to absorb mediation ofthe entire test at one sitting. Part 1 was
mediated and re-tested a few days later. Part 2 was then mediated, and
re-tested a few days later. (Appendix A will illustrate the procedure by
giving one example of the pre-test and the mediation instructions to
teachers).

Sample
We report here results obtained in one ofthe pre-academic centres in the
rural area ofthe country. Assessment was conducted with a group of 23
students, 4 males and 19 females, aged 20-23 years. Three of the
students were relatively new immigrants for whom English was their
third language. All students were considered the weaker group of
academically at-risk students, having failed to obtain a matriculation
certificate. In addition to studying EFL, these students were concomi-
tantly taking up to a total of seven other subjects.

Results
The comparison of pre- and post-test performance of the students can be
analysed in a number of ways. First of all one can see that on average
students' scores improved by more than one standard deviation (see
Table 1). The effect size is 1.2 (Effect size = Gain score/SD ofthe post-
test). This result indicates that many of the students indeed benefited
from mediation and were able to apply the acquired strategies to the new
text. Secondly, it became clear that while the pre- and post-rest scores
are highly correlated (r = 0.8), the gain scores are negatively correlated
with the pre-test scores. This means that the pre-test scores reflect the
students' actual performance level but not their learning potential.

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 Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension
Table 1 Mean scores and standard deviations in the pre- and post-
=
test of EFL text comprehension. Max score 34; N 23 =
Mean SD

Pre- 17.0 6.3

Post- 22.6 4.5

A number of students with identical pre-test scores performed very

differently at the post-test. For example, students T and H both had
29 percent correct answers at the pre-test, but after mediation T got
59 percent, while H only 38 percent. This is true also of initially higher
achieving students. For example, L and A both received 62 percent at the
pre-test, but at the post-test A improved his result to 82 percent, while
L remained with 65 percent. This finding confirms the practical value of
the EFL dynamic assessment procedure because it provides in-depth
information about the different learning needs of the students who have
the same standard performance scores.
In order to operationalize the students' learning potential the follow-
ing scoring method was developed. In our opinion, the learning potential
score (LP8) has to reflect both gain made by the student from pre- to post-
test and an absolute achievement score at the post-test. Thus

(8 post - 8 pre) Spost

LP8 + = (2 S post - 8 pre)lMax S
MaxS MaxS

where 8 pre and S post are pre- and post-test scores, and Max 8 is a
maximum obtainable score. The above formula provides a theoretical
basis for distinguishing between high learning potential and low learn-
ing potential students. For example, a student who at a pre-test had a
low score = 50, but made a significant progress and reached the maxi-
mum score of 100 at the post-test would have a very high LPS = 1.5;
whereas a student who at a pre-test had a low score = 50 and made no
=
progress receiving at the post-test the same score 50, would have a very
low LP8 = 0.5. All other cases characterized by different combinations of
gain scores and absolute post- test score can be plotted against these
extremes.
The LP8 of the students from our sample ranged from 0.4 7 to 1.21. One
can distinguish three sub-groups: a high learning potential sub-group
with LPS>1.0, a low learning potential sub-group with LPS<O.71 and a
large sub-group with LPS ranging from 0.79 to 0.88 (see Figure 1). It is
important to emphasize that all three groups include some students who
performed at the pre-test at the same level, which means that the

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Learning Potential Score
1.4
1.2
1
(f)

~ 0.8
o
eno 0.6
0.4
0.2
o

Students
Figure 1 Distribution of learning potential scores in a group of
students.

learning potential adds important information regarding the students'

learning ability that is unobtainable by means of standard examination.

Discussion
The goal of this article was to explore the feasibility ofthe development
and implementation of the dynamic EFL assessment procedure in the
pre-academic classroom. The results indicate that the procedure is both
feasible and effective in obtaining information on students' learning
potential. It was confirmed that students with similar performance
levels demonstrated different, and in some cases dramatically different
abilities to learn and use new text comprehension strategies. Because of
this we can affirm that the paradigm of dynamic assessment is useful not
only in the field of cognitive performance but also in such curricular
domains as EFL learning.
At the same time one should be aware of those characteristic features
ofthe dynamic assessment procedure that impose certain limitations on
the generalizability ofthe results. Any dynamic assessment that includes
an element of intervention depends on the quality of mediation provided
by the assessor. In this respect dynamic assessment is closer to a
situation of instruction rather than examination. Results obtained in the
present study thus reflect not only the students' learning potential but
also the quality of mediation provided during the assessment. One may
always suspect that another assessor with a different mediational style
might reveal a somewhat different pattern of learning abilities in the
same group of students. Thus one of the possible directions for the future

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 Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension
research is a study of reliability of learning potential scores obtained
during assessment sessions conducted by different mediators.
The second limitation inherent in any curriculum-based assessment
is its dependence on students' content knowledge. There is no such thing
as a content-free language task which means that students with better
vocabulary and better knowledge of grammatical rules would always
have a certain advantage. Though our selection of assessment materials
was guided by the ideal of strategies-based text comprehension, it was
impossible to eliminate the element of content knowledge as such. In
other words, students who have a very poor knowledge base cannot
expect to reach a high achievement level even if their use of strategies is
quite good.
The instructional value of the dynamic EFL assessment lies in the fact
that its results can be used for the development of individual learning
plans for students with different learning needs. For example, work with
students who demonstrated an average pre-test performance but insuf-
ficient learning potential should focus on providing them with learning
and information-processing strategies, i.e. teaching them 'how to learn'.
Students with an average pre-test performance and high learning
potential should be given more challenging material and more opportun-
ity for independent study. Students with low pre-test performance and
low learning potential need an intensive investment into their general
learning and problem-solving skills that should be based on very simple
EFL material. Only after these students acquire the basic learning skills
should they be challenged by the standard EFL tasks.

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School Psychology International (2002), Vol. 23(1)

Appendix

Pre-test
Text:
'David and I were tourists in Europe last summer. We ate cheese in
Denmark and olives in Italy. The cheese and olives were very good. We
drank wine in France and tea in England. The tea from England and the
wine from France were excellent.'
Questions:
(1) The people in the story
(a) live in Europe;
(b) came to Europe on a visit;
(c) have never been to Europe;
(d) visit Europe every summer.
(2) How many places in Europe did they visit? What were they?
(3) They the English tea.
(a) didn't drink;
(b) ate;
(c) didn't like;
(d) liked.

Mediation instructions to teachers

Mediation of text analysis according to agency, location and time
reference.
Mediation of the strategy of comparing to alternatives and the strategy
of elimination.
Mediation of inferential reasoning.
Read the text. Try to identify who are the characters, where were they
and uiheri and what did they do.
Who: David and I
Where: Europe, Denmark, Italy, France, Engand
When: Last summer
What: Were tourists, ate cheese, ate olives, drank wine, drank tea.

Question 1.
Consider all alternatives one by one. First eliminate improbable [a) and
[c), then compare (hI and [d]. What is the difference between them? One
visit vs. visit every summer. Check the when - 'last summer'. There is no
information about visits every summer, therefore (h] is a correct answer.

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Question 2.
The question is about 'places in Europe'. Check where because it contains
information about the places, e.g. Denmark, Italy, France, England.
Why Europe should not be included? Because the question is about
places in Europe.
Question 3.
The question is related to English tea. Check all sentences which
mention English tea: 'We drank ... tea in England' and 'The tea from
England ... was excellent'. Check the alternatives [a] to [d], eliminate
impossible [a] and lbl, select more probable ldl, because if 'the tea was
excellent', most probably the tourists 'liked it'.

© Garb and Kozulin 1999

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