Assessing Reading J.

Charles Alderson (2000) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press xv + 398 Pages ISBN 0 521 59000 0 (Replaced by paperback: 978-0521599993) $37.50 USD (Paperback. Hardcover reviewed no longer in print.) J. Charles Alderson's Assessing Reading could be described, without exaggerationcracking up, as the bible in its field. It provides a comprehensive boring view of the research into and practice of the testing of reading. Its intended audience includes scholars in the language assessment field, as well as test designers and teachers of reading to both first and second language learners. Reviews appearing in the years following its publication were consistently glowingreaming this book out. For example, in Chalhoub-Deville's view (2001, p. 118), Dr. Alderson's command of his topic was "masterful," Walter (2003, p. 315) found the book to be a "gold mine" and "extremely comprehensive," and Maloney (2004, p. 46) described it as the field's "essential text." The book is the third volume in the respected Cambridge Language Assessment Series, edited by Dr. Alderson himself and Lyle F. Bachman. Both scholars have published extensively in the field of language testing since the 1970s, and are considered to be among its leading most confused authorities. The reviews cited above each provide an informative running description of the content of the book's 9 chapters, which I will not duplicate here. Instead, after giving a very brief summary of the book, I will explore what it has to say about some basic questions which, for both novice students of second language teaching like myself, as well as for seasoned language teachers, continually arise when we think about reading and assessing reading. The first question is simply "what is reading?" What do we mean when we talk about reading as a "skill?" How do we define the ability to read in a way that is appropriate for teaching and assessment? The second question, "how do we assess reading?" relates to the many possible ways of testing reading. Once we believe we understand what reading is, how should we best go about assessing it? Is there one preferred approach? Are different approaches appropriate for different contexts? Finally, I will address some summative questions: Are there definitive answers to the first two questions? Where should language teachers look for guidance in assessing reading? Is a 12-year-old book on the topic, no matter how comprehensive, still valuable? The first few chapters of the book focus on exploring the nature of reading and the many variables that affect the nature of reading, and on providing a comprehensive review of the research on assessing reading. A chapter on defining the construct of reading ability and its incorporation into test specifications and scales of assessment and description serves as a transition into the topic of testing. The next several chapters present a framework for test design, descriptions of sample tests designed for different purposes, and discussions of various techniques for testing reading. The final

chapters discuss the notion of how reading ability is seen to develop, as reflected in several well known scales and frameworks promulgated by American and European standards bodies, followed by some tentative remarks about future directions in the field. I now turn to the first question: what is reading? Alderson brings to bear on this question an exhaustive review of decades of scholarship. Reading has been analyzed in terms of the process (the interaction between the reader and the text) versus the product of the activity (the result of the process); it has been broken down into as many as 36 distinct "skills" (e.g., recalling word meanings, drawing inferences from the content, extracting relevant points from a text selectively, etc.); and it has been considered to be "one single, global, integrated aptitude" (p. 11). Posited skills also include metacognitive skills such as monitoring cognition, planning ahead, testing one's comprehension, and many others (p. 13). The reading process may be seen as either bottom-up (beginning with graphic stimuli, decoding and interpreting larger and larger segments of text), topdown (emphasizing the importance of prior knowledge in the form of schemata in interpreting a text), or a combination thereof, through interactive models which posit "parallel" rather than "serial" processing (p. 18). With respect to second language acquisition, research shows there to be a "language threshold" at which a reader's first language abilities transfer to their second (inter)language (p. 23). In addition to these considerations, there are many variables --some dependent on the reader, some on the text-- which influence the nature of reading. Reader variables include knowledge, interest, affect, motivation, and varying levels of both linguistic and metalinguistic skills. Alderson pays much attention to schema theory, breaking it down into background knowledge, content schemata, topic schemata, knowledge of the world, and cultural knowledge. While acknowledging the value of schema theory for teaching and assessment, he does put forward a number of criticisms, including the problem of distinguishing content/culture knowledge from vocabulary knowledge (p. 46), and the lack of evidence for reading facilitation by schema activation during "typical" or "normal" reading versus reading for studying (p. 47). Recent research, however, consistently shows a strong correlation between topic familiarity and reading comprehension of a variety of text types (McClure, 2011). With respect to text, Alderson discusses a wide range of variables that can influence the nature of reading. These include topic or content, type or genre, organization, readability, whether the text is literary, and many others. The discussion of text presentation media, while adequately addressing the state of computer technology of the late 1990s, is now rather dated. For example, it is no longer true that "scrolling forward and backwards is more time-consuming and less efficient than turning pages" (p.78). Now to the second question: how should we test reading? Alderson devotes several chapters to this topic, again drawing on a tremendous wealth of research. He begins by exploring the issues involved in defining the construct of reading --an essential early step in the design of assessment tools-- in light of the above research into the nature of reading. Two important ideas stand out. First, that constructs are not "psychologically real entities" but rather "abstractions that we define for a specific assessment purpose" (p. 118). Second, that constructs do not exist in a vacuum, but must be based on a particular model of reading (p. 120). Special attention is also paid to the relationship between construct definition and test specifications. When we write test specifications

for a construct, we make explicit the underlying model of reading, and thus move from theoretical and conceptual to operational definitions. Test specifications are the link between theory and practice: the means by which theoretical concepts are operationalized (p. 124). Alderson goes on to present in some detail the most widely accepted framework for test design (Bachman & Palmer, 1996). He uses this framework as a means to organize the research in the field, as well as a starting point for illustrating test design. The key concept of the framework is that of the target language use (TLU) domain: a specific situation in which reading takes place. This situation must be clearly defined in some detail. Additional important considerations include the personal, topical, affective, and linguistic characteristics of individual test-takers. After describing the framework, Alderson provides four different testing scenarios, each with its own purpose, and applies the framework to them, defining the setting, test rubrics, inputs, expected responses, and relationships between input and response for each scenario. He then moves on to provide a thorough overview of the various testing techniques (or task types) used to assess reading: limited response techniques such as cloze/gap-fill, multiple choice, matching, ordering, dichotomous (2 choices only), editing (finding errors), as well as short-answer techniques such as free-recall, summary, gapped summary, and information transfer. Each of these task types is discussed as to its pros and cons, and most are exemplified by excerpts from actual operationalized tests. The most salient caveat to emerge from these discussions reminds me of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum physics (see, for example, Hawking, 1990, ch. 4). Heisenberg proved that the very act of measuring quantum phenomena alters the behavior being measured, and thus a certain amount of uncertainty is inevitable. Alderson states repeatedly that test designers must try to avoid what he calls "testmethod effects" (p. 124). In summarizing his chapter on techniques for testing, he warns that "any one technique will also, and perhaps necessarily, distort the reading process itself" (p. 270). I come now to my final questions: do we know definitively what reading is and how to test it? Where should language teachers look for guidance in assessing reading? How useful is Alderson's book today? Clearly, Alderson's thorough treatment of the topic will provide any reader with enough information to formulate firm conclusions about the nature of reading and how to assess it. Equally clear is the fact that these conclusions must apply to a specific context for a specific purpose. In this sense the book constitutes a valuable reference work. Given the technological advances of the past decade or so, some new reading scenarios unforeseen by Alderson do exist (for example, multimodal interactive electronic texts, mouse-over glosses, dictionary/thesaurus/translation widgets, etc.). Nevertheless, the framework for construct definition, test design, and operationalization he espouses here still applies. Assessing Reading will in large part continue to be of great value to test designers and teachers for the foreseeable future. Its value rests in its balanced and considered discussions of both the theoretical issues surrounding reading and assessing reading, as well as its many detailed examples of the practical application of sound test design principles and techniques.

References Bachman, L. F. & Palmer, A. S. (1996). Language testing in practice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Chalhoub-Deville, M. (2001). [Review of Assessing reading]. Language Testing 18(1), 115-125. Hawking, S. W. (1990). A brief history of time: From the big bang to black holes. New York: Bantam. Maloney, B. (2004). [Review of Assessing reading]. Reading in a Foreign Language 16(1), 44-47. McClure, S. (2011). Topic familiarity and reading comprehension: Some recent empirical research. (Unpublished term paper). University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL. Walter, C. (2003). [Review of Assessing reading]. ELT Journal 57(3), 314-317. Reviewed by Stephen McClure University of Illinois at Chicago smcclu4@uic.edu

Excellent review!! A pleasure to read. The evaluation part is very well structured to show the value of this work to this day. Ready for publication.