Designing Assessment Tasks:

EXTENSIVE READING
EXTENSIVE READING
It involves longer texts
Journal articles, technical reports, longer essay, short
stories, book
Involves a focus of meaning mostly using top-
down processing ; occasional use of a targeted
bottom-up strategy
Challenges:
Formal assessment is unlikely to be contained within
the time constraints
Expected response likely involve as much written

Task to be
useful in
assessing
ER
Impromptu
reading plus
comprehension
questions
Short
answer
task
Editing
Scanning Ordering
Information
transfer
Interpretation
Task to be
useful in
assessing
ER
Skimming
Summarizing
Responding to
reading
Note-taking
SKIMMING TASKS
The process of rapid coverage of reading
matter to determine its gist or main idea.
It is a prediction strategy used to give a reader
A sense of the topic and purpose of a text
The organization of the text
The perspective point of view of the writer
Ease or difficulty
Its usefulness to the reader


Assessment of skimming strategies is usually
straightforward
Test takers answer questions such as:







Responses -> oral or written
Assessment in domain -> informal and formative


What is the main idea of this text?
What is the authors purpose in writing the text?
What kind of writing is this [newspaper article, ,,manual,
etc.]?
What type of writing is this [expository, technical, narrative,
etc.]?
How easy or difficult do you think this text will be?
What do you think you will learn from the text?
How useful with the text be for your [profession, academic
needs, interest]?
SUMMARIZING AND RESPONDING
SUMMARIZING
One of the most common in assessing extensive
reading
Difficult to evaluate
Four criteria for evaluation of a summary by Imoa
(2001)

Expresses accurately the main idea and supporting ideas
Is written in the students own words: occasional vocabulary
from the original text is acceptable
Is logically organized
Display facility in the use of language to clearly express ideas in
the text
SUMMARIZING AND RESPONDING
Evaluation of reading comprehension criterion will
necessity remain subjective
RESPONDING
Responding asks the reader to provide his or her
opinion on the text as a whole / some statement /
issue within it
Criterion of good response
the extent to which the test-taker accurately reflects
the content and arguments therein.
Score is difficult.
SUMMARIZING AND RESPONDING
A holistic scoring






3 Demonstrates clear, unambiguous comprehension of the main and
supporting idea
2 Demonstrates comprehension of the main idea but lacks
comprehension of some supporting ideas
1 Demonstrates only a partial comprehension of the main and supporting
ideas
0 Demonstrates no comprehension of the main and supporting ideas
NOTE TAKING AND OUTLINING
Informal assessment
Learners gain in retaining information
through marginal notes that highlight key
information or organizational outlines, that
put supporting ideas into a visually
manageable framework
Students notes- indicators of the presence or
absence of effective reading strategies