A High-stakes Testing Theoretical Description

12 want them to succeed “Support”. Next, the word nice means enjoyable “Nice”. Last, the word careful means giving a lot of attention to what you are doing so you do not have an accident, make a mistake, or damage something “Careful” The next examples are about the grammatical rules such as the use of simple past tenses, an adverb there, a pronoun it and simple present tenses. The simple past tense expresses events which began and end in the past Azar, 1999, p. 27. According to Allen 1995, p. 86 , “The great majority of English verbs form the past simple tense and past participle by adding the sound [d], [t] or [id] to the stem…” Allen 1995, p. 86 states that there are irregular verbs used in the simple past tense. Besides, the verb came is one of the examples of the irregular verb “Come”. The other examples of the grammatical rules are the use of an adverb there and a pronoun it. The adverb there is an adverb which indicates places “There”. Next, a pronoun is used in place of a noun Azar, 1999, p. 132. For example, I read a book; it was good. The pronoun it refers to the noun book Azar, 1999, p. 132. Next, the simple present is used to tell the truth Azar, 1999, p. 13. Krohn 1986, p. 11 states the –s form of verbs is used in the simple present tense with third person singular objects; otherwise the simple form is used. For example, He works every morning. Besides testing vocabulary items and grammatical rules, English language tests may test about English expression. One of English expression which may be tested is compliments. Compliments express appreciation and admiration at some one’s appearance, belongings or works Bagus, 2012. There are examples of 13 compliment such as That’s nice, That’s neat, Pretty good and I really like your skirt Bagus, 2012. Moreover, there are two characteristics of selective reading. First, selective reading tasks typically are constructed by using stimuli such as sentences, brief paragraphs or simple charts and graphs Brown, 2004, p.189. Second, brief responses are intended in selective reading Brown, 2004, p.189. Briefly, one example of selective reading tasks is filling-gap task Brown, 2004, p. 189.

c. Interactive Reading

According to Brown 2004, p. 201, interactive reading is similar to selective reading. Interactive reading focuses on the form of a language and meanings, but it focuses more on the meanings Brown, 2004, p. 201. It focuses on how the form of a language makes meanings. Therefore, there are two characteristics of interactive reading. First, it involves the test takers to interact with longer texts Brown, 2004, p. 189. The test takers have to negotiate with the meanings of texts in order to get intake to the texts Brown, 2004, p. 189. Second, interactive reading typically uses text genres such as narrative texts, descriptions, memos, recipes, announcements and so forth Brown, 2004, p. 189. Moreover, Brown 2004, pp. 201-210 states that interactive reading uses tasks such as cloze tasks, a reading comprehension, short-answer-tasks, editing, scanning, ordering tasks, and information transfer from charts, maps, diagrams and graphs. Regarding a reading comprehension is an example of interactive reading tasks, it is commonly used in English language tests Brown, 2004, p. 204.