Testing Grammar and Vocabulary

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Testing Grammar and Vocabulary

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Is testing grammar required?

• Control of grammatical structures was seen as the
  very core of language ability.
• Now, there has been a shift towards the view that
  since it is language skills that are usually of
  interest, then they should be tested directly,
  not the abilities that seem to underlie them.
• Most proficiency test that are administered on a
  large scale still retain a grammar section.
• It cannot ensure that a grammar test includes a
  good sample of all possible grammatical elements.

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Writing Specification

• For achievement test where teaching objectives or
  the syllabus list the grammatical structures to
  be taught, specification of content should be
  quite straightforward.
• For proficiency and diagnostic tests, the van Ek
  and Trim publication referred to a
  notional-functional approach and Cobuild English
  Usage.

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Writing Items

• Whatever techniques are chosen for testing
  grammar, it is important for the text of the item
  to be written in grammatically correct and
  natural language.

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4 Techniques for testing grammar

• Gap Filling
• Paraphrase
• Completion
• Multiple choice
• The first three requires production on the part
  of the candidates, while multiple choice calls
  only for recognition.

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Gap Filling

• What was most disturbing ___________ that for the
  first time in his life Henry was on his own.
• What was most disturbing Noun Clause as the
  subject.
• That for the first time in Noun Clause as the
  object. (preceded by the conjunction that ).
• Subject (noun clause) _____________ Object
  (noun clause)
• _________ should be filled by verb
• Answer was

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Paraphrase

• Paraphrase items require the student to write a
  sentence equivalent in meaning to one that is
  given. It is helpful to give part of the
  paraphrase in order to restrict the student to
  the grammatical structure being tested.

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• Testing passive, past continuous form.
• When we arrived, a policeman was questioning the
  bank clerk.
• When we arrived, the bank clerk _________________
• Steps to explain
• Past continuous form.
• Passive form.
• Answer was being questioned.

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Testing Vocabulary

• Writing Specifications
• If vocabulary is being consciously taught, then
  presumably all the item thereby presented to the
  students should be included in the
  specifications.
• We can add all the new items that the students
  have met in other activities (reading, listening,
  etc).
• The usual way to specify the lexical items that
  may be tested is to make reference to one of the
  published word lists that indicate the frequency
  with which the words have been found to be used.

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Sampling

• Words can be grouped according to their frequency
  and usefulness.
• From each of the groups, items can be taken at
  random, with more being selected from the group
  containing the more frequent and useful words.

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Writing Items

• Testing Recognition Ability
• Recognize synonyms
• Choose the alternative (a,b,c,d) which is the
  closest in meaning to the word on the left of the
  page.
• Gleam a. gather b. shine c. welcome d. clean

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• Recognise definitions
• Loathe means
• a. Dislike intensely
• b. Become seriously ill
• c. Search carefully
• d. Look very angry

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Testing production ability

• The testing of vocabulary productivity is so
  difficult that it is practically never attempted
  in proficiency tests as information on receptive
  ability is regarded as sufficient.

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