RATE AssociationsRATE IssuesOlympiadEventsResourcesStaffCurrent Issue

by Sanda-Gabriela Guină, “Iuliu Hațieganu” School, Cluj-Napoca
Key words: extensive reading, testing: formal/informal, alternative testing, encouragemnent, support.

Abstract: The conventional practice is “teach, test, grade, and move on” where the assessment is summative, according to Black & Wiliam research. The general accepted idea is that teachers should only test what they teach and should not teach just in order to test. Testing is part of the learning process, but it is not a means in itself. Different types of tests are used in formal contexts, both in classrooms and in external/international exams. But when it comes to extensive reading, testing shouldn’t be our priority, or it should be done in a rather informal way.

 

An old Chinesse proverb says that “You can’t fatten a pig by weighing it” and this may apply to assessing sometimes. It is useful to admit that our learners can be stressed by the perspective of having a test, mainly because of their parents’ pressure. But as “success breeds success” and “failure breeds failure” we should be careful not to discourage our students, leading them to a low self-esteem because they may be tempted to doubt their abilities even to learn a foreign language and to reject the language as being difficult. We need them to be, if not enthusiastic about reading in English, at least actively involved and aware of the usefulness of such an ability. On the other hand, the “washback” effect is obvious too. Students tend to consider unimportant the issues that are not tested and they do not insist on them at all. Sometimes it makes pedagogic sense to prepare tests deliberately easy and it is recommended to offer suport for the learners even during the test, by means of scaffolding. Moreover, in class, we do not simply present a test to the students, we prepare them in advance, mentioning the specific content on which to focus, revise and reinforce, presenting even samples of tasks and grading criteria.

Tests indeed discriminate between good and not so good students, but they shouldn’t be too difficult, the tasks should be clear, unambiguous, they have to meet more stringent criteria of comprehensibility than the exercises done in class, while teaching.
The reason we are testing is very important, we must know exactly what the purpose of the test is and what we want our students to do. Christine Nuttall identifies four possible reasons for giving a test: placement into a reading class or programme (placement tests), diagnosis of students’ reading needs or weaknesses (diagnostic tests), assessment of the progress (progress tests), assessment of a student’s achievement at the end of a course/year (achievement tests).
Proficiency tests are not based upon any syllabus, being designed to measure language ability in general. They are often used to select candidates for higher education, or employment.

SHOULD WE TEST IN EXTENSIVE READING PROGRAMMES?
There are situations when testing is not a good idea at all, or at least it should be done quite differently. In the extensive reading programmes where the ultimate aim is to encourage learners to read as much as possible and for pure enjoyment, it is advisable not to impede the readers’ pleasure, because testing might well produce negative effects and reduce motivation.

Reading comprehension is not a stable or unitary ability, it is interactive and depends on the text difficulty, prior knowledge, vocabulary, genre or interest. It also depends on decoding skills and strategies for constructing meaning. Being so, the assessment of reading comprehension has been a controversial issue. First, we must understand that there is no “best method” in this case. It is generally accepted that assessment is formative or summative and that it should have the following qualities: valid- it should assess what we want to measure; reliable- not involving subjectivity; transparent- and in line with the learning outcomes; fair- equivalence of opportunities to succeed for all students; equitable- should not discriminate between learners; formative- even when it is intended to be summative.
“Certain methods are common-place for reasons of convenience and efficiency, often at the expense of validity”. (J. Ch. Alderson, 2005:204)

Formal methods of assessing reading include:
Multiple-choice tests- the most common way of assessing reading. However they become more and more unpopular. The problems they have is the presence of that number of distractors that can present readers with possibilities they may not otherwise have thought about, resulting in an unusual picture of their understanding. Some researchers even argue that the ability to answer multiple-choice is different from a reading ability.
The cloze tests: typically constructed by deleting from selected texts every n-th word, requiring the test-taker to restore the words. At the beginning and the end of the text, one or two sentences are left intact to provide some contextual support.
The gap-filling tests: They may represent an alternative technique to the cloze tests. The procedure has the benefit of being more on the teacher’s control. If the intention is to check the overall understanding of a text, those words that seem to carry the main ideas will be deleted.
Short answer tests: learners are required to answer briefly, using just a few words to see if they have understood the content. The problem comes from the many possible answers that can be identified by readers, making the marking a bewildering task for the teacher.
The cloze-elide test: instead of deleting words from a text, the writer inserts words, the task of the reader being to detect these redundant words and reconstruct the initial form.
The free-recall test: after reading a text the students are asked to writte down everything they remember from it. The problem is that this technique looks more like a test of memory.
The summary test: requires learners to summarize the main ideas in an organized form, selecting relevant information. The problem comes when marking, because the teacher may be interested either in checking if the students mentioned all the important ideas, or in observing if they succeeded in creating a good text holistically.

Alternative tests. These are supposed to be based on what Christine Nuttal calls “real-life” methods. The problem with the above mentioned forms of testing is that they have no relation to the texts chosen or to the ways in which people read in normal life. In their case, the only purpose for which the students read the text is to respond to the test questions. The new approach suggested by “alternative” techniques is to connect the test task to the text type, trying to measure “normal”comprehension.
The description of the IELTS Test of Academic Reading illustrates the range of techniques that are now being employed in the testing of reading. Examples for these can be the following: multiple choice, short-answer questions, sentence completion, notes/summary taking, diagram/flow chart/ table completion, choosing headings for given paragraphs, matching pictures with paragraphs, identification of writer’s view, “true/false/not mentioned”, ordering tasks, editing texts, etc. (International English Language Testing System Handbook, 1999, and Specimen Materials, 1997, cited in Alderson, 2005).
It is obvious that testers have broadened the set of texts and the set of tasks that can be used when assessing reading, trying to be as close to the real purpose of reading as possible and of course to include a battery of texts that might interest the readers even in the real life, not only when being assessed. If earlier tests typically included passages from the classical literature, from good modern fiction, usually narrative or descriptive types, occasionally from scientific or pseudo-scientific texts, more recent tests frequently include graphic texts, photographs, drawings that go along with the proper text, taken from authentic, non-literary sources, from newspapers, magazines, advertisment, shopping lists, timetables, public notices, e-mails, etc. Such texts are suitable for more realistic assessment tasks, having more familiarity and validity for the readers.

Informal methods of assessment
Informal assessment, also called authentic or alternative, allows teachers to be aware of the ongoing progress of their students, as often as the teacher wants, giving the possibility for remedial work if needed. Informal assessment, not being necessarily “pencil-paper based”, can be used anytime without interfering with instructional periods. Fordham et al. (cited in Alderson, 2005:259) suggests the term checking, instead of assessing, considering it less formal and treathening. In the second-language reading context, Nuttall (2003) does not recommend regular formal testing of extensive reading, because it can be damaging, making learners read less freely and widely and with less pleasure. Instead, she suggests using records that can reveal what books were read by each student, especially when using a class library, graded books organized on levels of difficulty.
The research in this field has so far identified two common types of informal methods: performance-based and portfolio-based assessment. Both methods use typical classroom activities to measure progress towards curricular goals and objectives. These activities can be monitored and recorded by teacher’s observation or by student self-assessment.
Commonly used activities may include: talking with learners about progress, checking how far a reader gets in a passage during silent reading, miscue analysis – used when reading aloud or retelling, paired-reading, writing samples of students’ work, projects, journals, games and role playing, debates and brainstorming, completing incomplete stories, story retelling, possibly based on a sequence of pictures, checklists – which specify behaviour or products expected, questionnaires, interviews, portfolios, self-asessment and peer-assessment.

Conclusion: When it comes to assessing reading, especially extensive readig, teachers and educators should be open to implement informal methods that seem to gain more importance in the learning process nowadays since we promote a student-centered, not a teacher-centered approach. Evaluation is seen as a learning experience in itself, it is not the final process in learning, it is part of the learning process. It can offer possibilities for reflection, thinking and roundup. Getting our students used to evaluate and reflect upon their work and performance can make them better learners and can assure long-term success. Mistakes can be seen as steps towards progress and students can learn from them what works and what doesn’t work in their case. Interactive evaluation and assessment are useful tools in the modern teaching. While learning, students can be taught to make repeated processes of critical thinking about their performances and these can be of great help when deciding the next steps, in guiding their future development. If we encourage children to read extensively and offer them access to graded readers, the simple selection of what books they choose to read will tell us where they feel comfortable, what their level is at a certain moment. The support we offer during the process of implementing an extensive reading programme, together with the level of enthusiasm we succeed in transmitting will be crucial in convincing students to read for pleasure, for knowledge and not for a particular test or examination.

Bibliography:
- Alderson, J.Charles (2005). Assessing Reading, Cambridge University Press
- Nuttall, Christine (2005 edit). Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, Macmillan ELT
- Bamford, J. & Day, R (2004) Extensive Reading Activities for Teaching Language, Cambridge University Press
- Changing Teaching through Formative Assessment, by Paul Black and dylan William, King’s College, London- available at www.oecd.org/education/ceri


Biodata:
Sanda Gabriela Guină graduated from Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of Letters, in 2000 and has been teaching for 20 years at “Iuliu Hațieganu” Secondary School in Cluj-Napoca. She has participated in courses, seminars and conferences, being open to discover useful ideas to help her become a better teacher. She is the co-author of “Upgrading 1/2/3/4” (a series of auxiliary courses designed for secondary classes) and the author of “Strategies for Developing Reading Skills and Promoting Reading Habits” (2020). She is passionate about finding ways to encourage pupils to read extensively.