Word formation items

The technique tests production and is used for testing vocabulary. Here is an example of a word formation item:

Write a word in each blank. The word you write must be the correct form of the word on the left.

(i)	CARE	Be ….. when you cross the street.
(ii)	CRUEL	To mistreat animals is a form of ………… .
(iii)	INTEREST	Do you think this book is …………. ?
(iv)	ENTER	Can you show me the ……….. to the cave?

Items involving synonyms

The technique is used for testing vocabulary skills (production level). Look at the example:

Write in each space the best word to replace the words underlined in each sentence:

(i)	Tom went at once to the doctor’s.	immediately
(ii)	All of a sudden there was a loud cry.	…………………..
(iii)	I came across an interesting book.	…………………..
(iv)	The boat is over fourteen feet in length.	…………………..

P ractical Tasks

1. Study the coursebooks and test materials you have at your disposal and find 2-3 examples for each test item type. Do they meet the requirements presented above?

2. One of the most difficult stages in designing a test is formulating instructions. As you know, any instruction should be clear, precise and not very long. Divide the examples you found for question 1 into groups like Matching, Gap filling, etc. and write out the instructions which introduce the tasks. They will be helpful when you design the first test of your own (and not only the first).

3. Try to divide the item types samples into groups in accordance with skills they test.

4. It’s time now to formulate a kind of rule for ourselves. The rule is about choosing item types for testing different skills. Fill in the table below:

SKILLS	Test item types
LISTENING
READING
PHONETICS
VOCABULARY
GRAMMAR

Are there any universal item types? What are they?

What are the skills-specific item types?

It’s high time now to trial the procedure of test design. First, get divided into groups. Each group chooses an area to be tested – Grammar, Vocabulary, etc. Then you go step by step answering all questions which have been already discussed. It’s not going to be a complete test – try to design 2-3 tasks (remember task components?) containing 5 items each.

Remember

Whatever and whenever you test your students the test should comprise the following parts

If you plan to use a test you should make sure you have the following ‘tools’:

The test itself, i.e. tasks and questions which are called, as you remember, test items. The best variant is to have a copy for each student. Do not allow the students to write in the copies – in this case you will be able to use them several times with different classes (if the test proves to be reliable, of course).

The answer sheets – the sheets where the students actually write their answers. MIND that it takes some time to get used to the situation when you read from one sheet and write on another – some spoilt test papers cannot be avoided at the beginning. Also MIND that Answer Sheet may be either a blank sheet of paper or a specially designed table to fill in with answers – the second is surely more difficult to deal with.

The keys (only one copy for you). Depending on the Answer Sheet they may be either written as you feel necessary or organised in a special sort of Matrix which sometimes makes teacher’s life easier.

Assessment in ELT

In the part above we dealt with testing, i.e. we firstly considered various test types and their peculiarities, secondly, we discovered a certain scheme of test construction (in case we design a test ourselves) and the main requirements to any test and finally we worked out what really can be tested and what cannot and why.

In other words in the previous part we dealt with objective assessment, i.e. assessment forms which imply only one correct answer and, therefore, those answers may be treated strictly as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

Robert hurt _______ while he was climbing up the tree.

A him B himself C his D oneself

But what about situations when we ask our students, for example, to describe their families.

Student One says ‘My family is not large enough – there are only four of us’.

Student Two says ‘There are only four members in our family’

Student Three says ‘Our family is VERY big – I have a mother, and a father and three sisters and two brothers and we also have five cats and a canary bird’

Which statement is right? Which statement is wrong?

In this case it means that we need another assessment instrument, not a test with its ‘right’-‘wrong’-‘true’-‘false’ answers.

In this case when we assess our students’ performance we do not use keys. What we do use is CRITERIA. This is what is called subjective assessment.

Depending on what we assess we choose different sets of criteria. These sets are definitely going to differ in assessment of speaking and writing.

Speaking Assessment

When you assess your students’ speaking skills you have two major questions:

• What tasks to use?

• How to assess – what criteria pay attention to?

As far as Assessment tasks are concerned the same golden rule must be observed:

for assessment you choose tasks which you employ for teaching. The tasks which are absolutely unknown to your students cannot be used as it might be not SPEAKING itself which is assessed but the ability to grasp the idea of something new and ability to adapt oneself to the circumstances. The latter two abilities are very important and must be developed. But you cannot assess them unless it has been the focus of your special attention within a period of time.

Now it’s time to speak about criteria. Assessment criteria do not exist by themselves, moreover, they greatly depend on the objectives of teaching speaking you set.

Think of speech characteristics which were discussed last year and make a list of them. The first one has been done for you:

• accuracy

• ______________________

• ______________________

• ______________________

• ______________________

Now we may draw the table of assessment criteria to be used for speaking assessment. Mind that ACCURACY exists at three levels phonological, lexical and grammatical. Another thing is that it’s better not just to enumerate criteria but make a gradation according to ‘excellent’ – ‘good’ – ‘satisfactory’ – ‘poor’ system we have. Here is the result of our job:

		excellent	good	satisfactory	poor
Accuracy	Phonological
	Lexical
	Grammatical
Fluency

Complete the rest of your table yourself. How many criteria do you have all in all? Are there any which are specific for monologue / dialogue only?

Practical task

Watch a recording of a student performing a speaking task. Assess the performance using criteria we designed. What mark would you give to the student?

When you gave marks for all aspects (criteria) you add the marks up and then divide them to a the number of criteria. You’ll get the average mark which is going to be the student’s final mark:

5 (phonetics) + 4 (vocabulary) + 4 (grammar) + 5 (fluency) + 3 (content) = 21 : 5 = 4.2. It means that our student has ‘good’ as a final mark.

Here we have the issue of weighting (do you remember what it means?). Almost always there will be some criteria which are more important than other and the situation will vary from situation to situation. What is more important for you NOW is the thing you decide yourself. If you want to emphasise a certain feature in the table, you can double the particular mark. For example, you may want to emphasise to your class the importance of correct use of language, especially if you hear many interesting stories which are marred by grammar mistakes. In this case simply double the score for grammar. Your marks will thus be read:

5 (phonetics) + 4 (vocabulary) + 8 (grammar) + 5 (fluency) + 3 (content) = 25.

Here you cannot just divide the total sum to the number of marks. You have to count the maximum total sum, i.e. 5 (phonetics) + 5 (vocabulary) + 10 (grammar) + 5 (fluency) + 5 (content) = 30

25 out of 30 (ap. 80%) – good

If you want to reduce the weighting of any section, simply draw lines through the relevant parts of the table. For example, if you want to give less importance to content, you might want to mark this section out of 2. The table then would appear as follows:

		excellent	good	satisfactory	poor
Accuracy	Phonological
	Lexical
	Grammatical
Fluency
Content

The total marks then would be

5 (phonetics) + 4 (vocabulary) + 4 (grammar) + 5 (fluency) + 2 (content) = 20 out of 23 = 86% - good

It is very useful to write brief descriptors for different levels for each category like shown in the table below:

		5	4	3	2
Accuracy	Grammar	High standard of grammar. No or 1-2 minor mistakes	Accurate grammar though possibly some minor mistakes (3-4) which do not hinder communication	5-6 basic repetitive errors OR grammar inaccuracies which do not result in serious confusion	Many grammatical inaccuracies at the level of morphology and syntax which result in serious confusion

criterion

sub-criterion

descriptors which together form gradation

N ow look through Speaking Assessment again and try to do the same job for Writing Assessment. Share the results with the group and teacher.

Start with writing tasks:

To crown it all formulate the golden rule for assessment:

ASSESSMENT GOLDEN RULE
Skills assessed		Way of assessing
Listening
Reading
Phonological
Lexical
Grammar
Speaking
Writing