7th session reading strategies

READING AS A STRATEGIC PROCESS

Reference

Alderson, J.C. (2000) Assessing reading. (pp. 85-115). C.U.P



Research into the assessment of reading.FACTORS AFFECTING THE DIFFICULTY OF READING TEST ITEMS Language of questions Types of Questions Testing Skills Role of Grammar in Reading Tests Role of Vocabulary in Reading Tests Use of Dictionaries in Reading Tests

Exercise: Understanding Fact and Opinion

FACTORS AFFECTING THE DIFFICULTY OF READING TEST TEXTS Background knowledge Vs Text Content Text length


Research into the assessment of reading.FACTORS AFFECTING THE DIFFICULTY OF READING TEST ITEMS

FACTORS AFFECTING THE DIFFICULTY OF READING TEST TEXTS Background knowledge Vs Text Content Text length Infering


FACTORS AFFECTING THE DIFFICULTY OF READING TEST TEXTS

Text Length


Alderson (2000. p.108-109) A problem all reading-test developers face is how long the texts should be on which they base their tests.

Text Length


Engineer (1997) “texts longer than 1.000 words were used, the abilities that could be measured changed”.

Text Length

“The ability to identify the main idea of long texts might be thought to be qualitatively different from the ability to identify the man idea in shorter texts ”.

“Testing for academic purposes, is that this practice reflects more closely the situation where students have to read and study long texts ”.


Text Length

“Long texts allow testers to assess syntactic and lexical knowledge more than discourse processing abilities..

It is also likely to be much easier to measure reading speed using longer texts than with a number of short passages with associated questions” Alderson (p.108-109)


Text Length

SHORT TEXTS

Abilities are qualitatively better measured.

LONG TEXTS

Abilities are qualitatively different.

Better for testing academic purposes- Syntactic knowledge- Lexical knowledge- Background knowledge

Measure reading speed.

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax


Text Length


SUMMARY

We have explored variables that affect the assessment of reading in a first and second language. The influence of both the questioning set and the passages on

which comprehension is assessed.The implications of difficulty of a reading test towards the

relationship between text and items.The language of the questions, their wording and the frequency

of the vocabulary used.The relationship between the question and the required

information in the text are clearly crucial.Item testing reading comprehension and those testing what

might be called linguistic skills is something to be bore in mind when designing reading tests.


SUMMARY

We have explored variables that affect the assessment of reading in a first and second language. Whether vocabulary knowledge is felt to be a relevant or a

contaminating variable in reading assessment is an important consideration.

Text topic clearly has an important effect on comprehension, and especially in the extent to which it engages background knowledge.


TECHNIQUES FOR TESTING READINGChapter Seven

7th session reading strategies

Education