Types of language assessment

OBJECTIVE TESTING
A traditional assessment technique
A test with a single correct response
Also known as “selected-response” and
“structured-response” items
Typically assess lower-level skills

OBJECTIVE TEST ITEMS
Relatively easy to administer, score and
analyze
Guessing can be a distinct possibility
Poor readers may be unjustly penalized

GUIDELINES IN WRITING OBJECTIVE TEST ITEMS
It should cover important content and skills
Reading level and vocabulary of item should be as
elementary as possible
Each objective item should be stated in an
unambiguous manner, and confusing sentence
structure and wording should be avoided.
Objective items should not consist of verbatim
statements or phrases lifted from the text.
Clues to the correct answer should not be provided.

TYPES OF OBJECTIVE TEST ITEMS
MULTIPLE-CHOICE ITEMS
MATCHING TYPE ITEMS
ALTERNATE-CHOICE ITEMS

• Basic format consists of a stem and responses (one of which
is correct; others are called distractors).
• Stem may be written as either a question or an incomplete
statement.
• Three to five options.
• Useful for assessing recall of facts and application of
knowledge.
• Can be used to assess higher-order thinking skills (much
more difficult to write).

Advantages
• Allow a test to comprehensively and efficiently sample
the content domain.
• Can be used in virtually all subject areas.
• Can be scored relatively quickly.
• Scoring is an objective process.
• Can provide diagnostic information.
Limitations
• Susceptible to guessing.
• Can be quite time consuming to construct.

MATCHING TYPE TEST
• Basic format consists of two lists (stimuli and responses).
• Should be a one-to-one correspondence between
members of the two lists.
• Considered to be a special case of multiple-choice item.
• Can assess knowledge and comprehension skills.
• Especially useful in measuring understanding of
concepts or terms that are interrelated.

MATCHING TYPE TEST
Advantages
Permit efficient assessment of related facts, ideas, and concepts.
Relatively easy to construct.
Basically a combination of multiple-choice items using the same set of
responses.
Scoring is relatively easy.
Limitations
Require large amount of related concepts or ideas.
Very difficult to design for higher-order skills.

• Essentially a special case of multiple-choice items where
options are limited to only two choices.
• Most popular type is the true-false item.
• Variations might include “correct–not correct,” “yes–
no,” and “fact–opinion.”
• Can be effective if written carefully (despite negative
press).
• Tend to overestimate student achievement since students
have a 50% chance of guessing the correct answer.

• Advantages
Relatively quick to construct, answer, and score.
Can be scored efficiently and objectively.
• Limitations
Highly susceptible to guessing.
Predominantly lower-level skills are appropriately
assessed with these items.

MULTIPLE-CHOICE TEST ITEM EXAMPLE

T F 1. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.
T F 2. If Triangle ABC is isosceles and angle A measures
100 degrees, then angle B is 100 degrees.
T F 3. If a distribution of scores has a few extremely low
scores, then the median will be numerically larger than the
mean.
T F 4. The larger the number of scores in a distribution, the
larger the standard deviation of the scores must be.
ALTERNATE-CHOICE TEST EXAMPLE

TEST OF GRAMMAR AND USAGE
Grammar the agreed-upon structure of a language,
the way that individual words are formed and the
manner in which those words are then combined to
form meaningful sentences.
Usage involves the accepted and expected way in
which specific words are used by a particular
community of people.

The most common test formats testing grammar:
o Completion items
o Transformation items
o Paraphrase
o Rearrangement
o Editing
o Combination and addition items
o Items involving the changing of words

Grammar Recognition should be done
when…
 More material needs to be covered.
You want to test different levels of learning.
You have little time for scoring.
You are not interested in evaluating how well a test
taker can formulate a how well a test taker can
formulate a correct answer.
You have a large number of test takers.

Grammar Production should be done when…
 You want to evaluate a person’s ability to formulate a correct
answer.
 You have more time to score the items
 You want to test a persons ability to apply concepts and
information to a new situation.
 You have a clear idea of the and concepts that should be
tested.

Adopted from Dr. Kia Kravas presentation

The reading process
Reading is a dynamic process in which the
reader interacts with the text to construct
meaning. Inherent in constructing meaning
is the reader's ability to activate prior
knowledge, use reading strategies and adapt
to the reading situation.

What should assessment of reading focus
on?
 Alderson argues that we should focus our assessment of
reading on the target skills we want out students to develop.
Major reading subskills include
 Reading quickly to skim for gist, scan for specific details, and
establish overall organisation of the text
 Reading carefully for main ideas, supporting details, author’s
argument and purpose, relationship of paragraphs, and fact vs
opinion
 Drawing inferences from both stated and implied content

Choosing texts
Many sources for reading texts: purpose written,
taken directly from authentic material or adapted.
Use a variety of text types; do not select texts of a
particular kind just because they are readily available
Choose texts of appropriate length; detailed reading
can be assessed with texts consisting of a few
sentences. Texts of up to 2000 words may be used
for extensive reading at higher levels

Developing test items/questions
The wording of the reading test questions
should not cause comprehension difficulties to
learners. It should always be within their
capabilities and less demanding than the text
itself.
Responses to test items should make minimal
demands on writing ability.
The items should be in the same order as the
information in the text. Mixing up the order of
questions increases the difficulty level.

Assessing reading comprehension: Three
levels
The first level, literal
comprehension, is the most obvious.
Comprehension at this level involves
surface meanings. At this level,
teachers can ask students to find
information and ideas that are
explicitly stated in the text.

Levels of comprehension
The second level is interpretive or referential
comprehension. At this level, students go beyond what
is said and read for deeper meanings. They must be able
to read critically and analyse carefully what they have
read. Students need to be able to see relationships
among ideas, for example, how ideas go together and
also see the implied meanings of these ideas. It is also
obvious that before our students can do this, they have
to first understand the ideas that are stated (literal
comprehension).

Referential Level of comprehension
 At this level, teachers can ask more challenging
questions such as asking students to do the following:
Re-arrange the ideas or topics discussed in the text.
Explain the author's purpose of writing the text.
Summarize the main idea when this is not explicitly
stated in the text.
Select conclusions which can be deduced from the
text they have read.

Levels of comprehension
 Finally, the third level of comprehension is critical
reading whereby ideas and information are evaluated.
Critical evaluation occurs only after our students have
understood the ideas and information that the writer has
presented. At this level, students can be tested on the
following skills:
The ability to differentiate between facts and
opinions.
The ability to recognize persuasive statements .
The ability to judge the accuracy of the information
given in the text.

Some tips on item writing
 Do not write items for which the correct response can be
found without understanding the text.
 Do not write items that some candidates are likely to
answer from general knowledge without reading the
text.
 Make the items independent of each other; do not make
the correct response on one item depend on another
item being responded to correctly.

Possible testing formats for reading tests: Multiple
choice
Multiple-choice questions are a common
device for testing students’ text
comprehension. They allow testers to control
the range of possible answers to
comprehension questions, and to some
extent to control students’ thought processes
when responding.

An example
A.
is written in an academic register.
B.
has an impersonal tone.
C.
is written as a narrative.
1.1 Read the first part of the text on p. 2 (the left side column), and choose
the best answers (A, B, or C) for items 1-4.
1. This text
A.
argue for better housing for poor people.
B.
describe the writer’s family life.
C.
explain what is needed to become a writer.
2. One aim of this text is to
A Publishing there is of a high standard.
B Writers have achieved more freedom there.
C Publishing still has a long way to go there.
3. What does the writer say about North Africa?

Matching
One alternative objective technique for the testing of
reading is multiple matching. Here two sets of stimuli
have to be matched against each other as, for
example, matching headings for paragraphs to their
corresponding paragraph, titles of books against
extracts from each book, and so on

Example
A. Rules for playing a game B. Written safety instructions
C. Instructions for paying tax D. Reverse side of a book’s title page
E. University brochure F. Travel guide
21. Exception for children under age 18. If you are planning to claim a return for your child, who was
under 18 at the end of 2009, and certain other conditions apply, you can include your child’s income
on your form.
22. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or any other information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
23. The inn is a little oasis amidst the narrow and bustling cobbled streets at the heart of the
historic city.
Read the following extracts (21-25) and decide in which publication they might appear. Use
each of the options below (A-H) only once. There is one option you do not need.

Ordering tasks (Strip stories)
Candidates are given a scrambled set of words,
sentences, paragraphs or texts and have to
put them into their correct order. The ordering
tasks can offer the possibility of testing the
ability to detect cohesion, overall text
organization.

Short-answer tests
Test-takers are simply asked a question which
requires a brief response, in a few words, not just
Yes/No or True/False. The justification for this
format is that it is possible to interpret students’
responses to see if they have really understood,
whereas on multiple-choice items students give
no justification for the answer they have selected
and may have chosen one by eliminating others.

The free-recall test
In free-recall tests (sometimes called immediate-
recall tests), students are asked to read a text, to
put it to one side, and then to write down
everything they can remember from the text. The
free-recall test is often held to provide a purer
measure of comprehension, since test questions
do not intervene between the reader and the
text.

The summary test
 Students read a text and then are required to summarize
the main ideas, either of the whole text or of a part, or
those ideas in the text that deal with a given topic. It is
believed that students need to understand the main
ideas of the texts, to separate relevant from irrelevant
ideas, to organize their thoughts about the text and so
on, in order to be able to do the task satisfactorily.
(Example: Gapped Summary)
 Scoring is problematic and can be subjective

Information-transfer test
The students’ task is to identify in the
target text the required information and
then to transfer it, often in some
transposed form, on to a table, map, figure
etc.

Cloze test
Cloze Tests are reading passages with the
blanks representing words that are deleted
from the original text; the blanks are to be
filled in by the reader

Types of cloze test
a. Fixed Ratio Cloze or Nth word deletion
 Words are deleted systematically by counting off,
regardless of the part of speech.
b. Rational Deletion Cloze
 Words are deleted by part of speech or content area
vocabulary.
c. Maze Technique
 Three word choices are provided at each missing word
interval.
d. Limited Cloze
 Word choices (one per blank) are provided all together
in a word bank at the top or bottom of the page.

Tips for developing reading
comprehension tests
 Make sure your assessment matches your reading program. Test the
skills you have taught
 Sample a range of reading subskills with different task types. Allow
4-10 items per task type
 Choose a range of text types appropriate to your program.
Consider students’ background knowledge and interests in selecting
texts. Familiarity with the topic aids comprehension
 Use authentic or adapted texts whenever possible
 Exploit the entire text. Questions should cover all sections of a text
 Assess inferencing and critical thinking. Include questions that
require students to think beyond what they see in print

TESTING WRITING SKILLS
Gap-Filling
Open-ended essay tests
Responding to given information
Information Transfer Tasks

Acknowledgement
NEAL DAPHNE R. DACION
Liceo de Cagayan University, Cagayan de Oro
Philippines
Master of Arts in Education major in English
Language Teaching- ( Third Trimester) April 2018
Language and Literature Assessment

Types of language assessment

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