testing overall ability - presentation jefferson yactayo
TRANSCRIPT
Arthur Hughes
Jefferson Yactayo2016 – 2017
Assessment and Foreign Language Teaching According to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
I. IntroductionII. Varieties of cloze procedure
I. Selected deletion clozeII. Conversational clozeIII.Advice on creating cloze type
passagesIV.Mini-cloze items
III.The C-TestI. DictationII. Mini-partial dictation items
IV.Conclusion
To measure overall ability is needed a test
with a number of different components
reading grammar
listening vocabulary
Final score
This type of test is hardly economical.
The notion of overall ability is related to
the idea that someone can be good
at a language
Techniques based on the idea of
reduced redundancy.
The cloze procedure reduces redundancy.
It is usually to delete a word every seven words.
Objective: to provide a measure of the underlying abilities, its content validity deriving from the fact
that the deletion of every nth word meant a representative sample of the text that was
obtained.
Cloze tests were easy to construct, administer and score.
Results of early research would be a reliable and valid test of candidate´s underlying language abilities.
Unfortunately, cloze could not deliver all that was promised.
Different passages, different results.
The context showed that it rarely extended
far from the gap.
Different results:
Native speakers between students.
The validity of the procedure was thus brought into question.
The fact that deletion of every nth word almost always produces problematic items (impossible to predict the
missing words).There is need to select the words to delete, from the
outset.
A) Selected deletion cloze
These deletions were chosen to provide “interesting“ items.
Native speakers could be expected to provide acceptable responses to all of the items. Acceptable responses are
limited in number.
Scores on cloze passages of this kind in the Cambridge Proficiency Examination have correlated very highly with
performance on the test as a whole.
A) Selected deletion cloze
B) Conversational cloze
It is used to reflect (and hopefully predict) oral as well as written ability.
B) Conversational cloze
B) Conversational cloze
This “conversational cloze“ passage turned out to be a reasonable predictor of the oral ability of overseas
students who had already been in Britian for some time.
It suggests that we should base cloze tests on passages that reflect the kind of language that is relevant for the
overall ability we are interested in.
C) Advice on creating cloze type passages
1. Appropriate level of difficulty.2. Aprropriate style to the kind of language ability being
tested.3. Pseudo-random method of deletion.4. The passage should be tried out on a good number of
comparable native speakers and the range of acceptable responses determined.
5. Clear instructions should be advised.6. The layout of the second test (Ecology) facilitates scoring.7. People to be tested should have several opportunities to
become familiar with the technique.8. Cloze test scores are not directly interpretable.
D) Mini-cloze items
This is an item that represents a brief exchange between two or more people, with just one gap.
D) Mini-cloze items
We can cover just the structures and vocabulary that we want to, and include whatever features of spoken
language are relevant for our purpose.
Disadvantage: the context is very restricted.
This is a variety of cloze.
Instead of whole words, it is the second half of every second word that is deleted.
Advantage: exact scoring is neccesary (native speakers effectively scoring 100 per cent) and shorter passages
are possible.
Disadvantage: it is harder to read than a cloze passage, and correct responses can often be found in the
surrounding text.
A) Dictation
Dictation was usual in the 1960s.
At the end of the decade it was challenged. Examination on dictation tests made it clear that words and word order
were not really given; the candidate heard only a stream of sound which had to be decoded into a succesion of words,
stored, and recreated on paper.
A) Dictation
Advantage: in predicting overall ability listening ability is evolved. It was easy to create, not to score.
Oller recommends that the score should be the number of words appearing in their original sequence. It works quite well when performance is reasonably accurate, but it is
time-consuming.
B) Mini-partial dictation items
Dictation has the same disadvantage as cloze: the passage determines the limits of what can be tested.
Any method presented provide a general estimate of people´s overall language ability.
Because of the considerable recent interest in cloze and ist common use as a learning exercise in its usual multi-
item format, it may be most obvious choice.
Simple gap filling methods (“mini-cloze“ and “mini-partial-dictation“) will give results at least as good as those of
any other method.