By:
NURUL ABIDAH
TESTING
OVERALL PROFICIENCY
One way of measuring
overall proficiency is to build a test with a number of components: for
example; reading, listening, grammar and vocabulary. The scores on the
different components of the test are added together to give an indication of
overall proficiency.
The notion of overall proficiency
is directly related to the commonsense idea that someone can be good (quite
good or poor) at a language. It makes sense to say that someone is good at a
language because performance in one skill is usually a reasonable predictor of
performance in another.
Reduced redundancy
Redundancy is when we listen to
someone or read something, there is more information available to us than we
actually need in order to interpret what is said or written. Reduced is native
speakers of a language can cope well when this redundancy. Learners’ overall
ability has been estimated by measuring how well they can restore a reduced
text to its original form.
Varieties of cloze
procedure
In its original form, the cloze
procedure reduces redundancy by deleting a number of words in a passage,
leaving blanks, and requiring the person taking the test to attempt to replace
the original words. The cloze procedure seemed very attractive as a measure of
overall proficiency. Cloze test were easy to construct, administer and score.
Selected deletion cloze
It used to be fairly agreement now that
the cloze procedure cannot be dependent upon automatically to produce reliable
and useful tests.
Conversational cloze
The conversational cloze passage turned
out to be a reasonable predictor of the oral proficiency of overseas students.
Advice on creating
cloze type passage
a. The
chosen passages should be at a level of difficulty appropriate to the people
who are to take the test.
b. The
text should be of a style appropriate to the kind of language ability being
tested.
c. Clear
instructions should be devised.
d. Cloze
test score are not directly interpretable. Etc
Mini cloze items
It is to get good coverage of the
features that we think is relevant, we have to include a number of passages,
which is hardly economical.
The C-Test
It is really a variety of cloze, which
its originators claim is superior to the kind of cloze described above. Instead
of whole words, it is the second half of every second word that is deleted.
3.
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Dictation
Dictation
tests give result similar to those obtained from cloze tests.
Mini-partial-dictation
items
It
determines the limits of what can be tested.
Conclusion
There are times when only a general
estimate of people’s overall language proficiency is needed and backwash is not
a serious consideration. Much kind of ways in doing the test that can increase
the level of the candidates and to know the level of the tests itself.
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