ISSUES IN ASSESSING Cesar Bazo

Hugo Dos Santos

READING SKILLS IN ELLS Yiming Guo

CTES 7480

Spring 2016
PERSONAL REFLECTION
Think about a situation in which you might use
reading when using the target language.
What kinds of written texts might you need to
encounter?
What kinds of tasks will you carry out in this
context?
 ROAD MAP
Purposes in Reading Assessment
Main Issues involved in Reading Assessment
 Choosing the appropriate texts for use as input
 Deciding on the kinds of tasks that assesses should
be able to perform
Hands-on activity demonstration
Conclusions
References
PURPOSES IN READING
ASSESSMENT
 To gain insight into how well assesses are able to
use their language abilities to understand relevant
written input that represents what learners might
need to deal with in everyday life.
 To understand the specific difficulties that learners
experience when trying to read in a foreign language
and help them overcome these difficulties.
(Green, 2014, p.97)
 ISSUE # 1:
CHOOSING THE APPROPRIATE TEXTS TO BE USED
AS INPUT:
THE USE OF AUTHENTIC READING MATERIALS VS.
THE USE OF NON-AUTHENTIC READING
MATERIALS
 IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

Definition of Authentic Materials:

 “Any text is ‘authentic’ if it was produced in response to real life
communicative needs rather than as an imitation of real life communicative
needs.”
(Forman, 1986)
 “Authentic materials are genuine interactions and authentic texts, which are
not planned for pedagogical purposes.”
(Nunan, 1998)

Importance of Authentic Materials:

 One of the important principles of communicative language teaching is that
authentic materials should be used in language instruction whenever
possible.
(Omaggio-Hadley, 1993)
 DISCUSSION TASK:
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES AND
DISADVANTAGES OF USING AUTHENTIC
READING MATERIALS?
 ADVANTAGES OF USING AUTHENTIC
READING MATERIALS
 Students are exposed to real written discourse, hence preparing
themselves for ‘real’ world communication.
 They keep students informed about what is happening in the
world.
 They can decrease students’ degree of anxiety to face the new
environment in the target language.
 They are ideal to teach/practice different reading sub -skills,
such as skimming and scanning.
 They contain a variety of text types and language styles not
easily found in conventional teaching materials.
 They will improve students’ motivation in learning English since
they are more interesting than non -authentic materials.
 They can encourage reading for pleasure, as they are likely to
contain topics of interest.
 They offer real language that is contextually rich and culturally
pertinent.
 DISADVANTAGES OF USING
AUTHENTIC READING MATERIALS
 The complexity of the language might discourage students
from learning.
 They might be culturally biased and reflect unusual native
speaker usage.
 They can become a learning burden as some may contain
items, particularly vocabulary, which are low frequency.
 They may not be readily available.
 They can become outdated easily, such as news found in
newspapers and magazines.
 Considerable lesson planning time is required to turn them
into something students can learn from.
 They are less likely to match assessment specifications than
material especially written for the assessment.
 WHAT CAN BE DONE TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE
OF READING MATERIAL SELECTION?

1. Using authentic materials as a starting point

2. Adapting the original (using semi -authentic texts)
 Adapted material can approximate authentic material, yet focus on
particular pedagogical points.
 It can be tailored in very specific ways for lower -level classes.
 Texts can be reshaped to better match test characteristics.
3. Creating texts from scratch can be beneficial, provided that
the texts:
 use an appropriate and natural range of vocabulary and grammar
 are of the same quality as those found in native media
 are likely to be published ‘as-is’ in native media
 ISSUE # 2:
DECIDING ON THE KINDS OF TASKS
THAT ASSESSES SHOULD BE ABLE TO
PERFORM
DECIDING ON THE KINDS OF TASKS

“ When educators discuss the assessment of

reading abilities, they are talking about the
comprehension of longer written texts.
When comprehension is being assessed, the
responses ought to come from an understanding of
the text”.
(Green, 2014, p.111)
 FOCUS

 If the focus is on reading efficiently, it should not

be possible to obtain the correct answers by
reading slowly and carefully through the whole text.
(Assessees should be given only limited time to
assess the text.)
 FOCUS

 If slow, careful reading is the focus, sufficient time

should be allowed for assessees to read in this
way.
 PURPOSE

 The purpose for reading a text in an assessment

should reflect the purpose a reader would naturally
have for reading similar texts in the world beyond
the classroom.
 MAIN STEP

 A main step in designing and preparing suitable tasks

is to read the text and note the key message or
messages that a reader would naturally take from the
input.
This:
 Is revealing about the processing involved;
Helps in targeting the ideas that learners need to
understand; and
Informs decisions about the task types and
response formats that will be most suitable.
READING ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
SHOULD
 Be meaningful (cover information that a reader in the real world
would need to extract);

 Include all the information needed to find the answer;

 Be positively worded (especially avoid double negatives);

i.e. Which food mentioned in the text is not unpleasant?

 Make it clear whether they relate to facts or opinions;

 Employ simpler language than the text (test understanding of

the text, not the questions).
 HANDS-ON ACTIVITY
DEMONSTRATION:
EXAMINE THE FOLLOWING TEXTS AND
READING TASKS AND TALK ABOUT THE
PROS & CONS OF EACH
 CONCLUSIONS

 The emergence of authentic reading materials in the language

classroom has brought about controversial points of view among
language teaching practitioners.
 However, it can be af firmed that there are still ways to
ef fectively adapt authentic reading materials for classroom use.
 As a result, a kind of genuine communication, which occurs in a
simulated real context, will be established.
 The starting point in designing reading assessments is to think
systematically about language use in the target language use
(TLU) domain.
 The objective is to create reading assessment tasks that
emulate TLU tasks so that performance on the assessment
reflects, to the extent possible, target language use.
 REFERENCES

 Forman, D. (1986). Factors Affecting the Choice of Relevant

Listening Material for Malaysian Students Planning to Study at
English Medium Institutes of Higher Education Overseas .
 Green, A . (2014). Exploring language assessment and testing:
Language in action. Routledge.
 Martinez, A .G. (2002) Authentic Materials: An Overview on
Karen's Linguistic Issues.
http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/authenticmaterials.html
 Nunan, D. (1998). Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook
for Teachers, International Book Distributors Limited, Great
Britain.
 Omaggio-Hadley, A . (1993). Teaching Language in Context. Heinle
& Heinle Publishers, Florence, KY.