Macroskills
The assessment of reading can imply the assessment of a
storehouse of reading strategies, as indicate in item 14. Aside from simply testing the ultimate achievement of comprehension of a
written text, it may be important in some contexts to assess one or more of a storehouse of classic reading strategies. The brief
taxonomy of strategies below is a list of possible assessment criteria. 8. Recognize the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their
significance for interpretation. 9. Recognize the communicate functions of written texts, according
to form and purpose. 10. Infer context that is not explicit by using background knowledge.
11. From described events, ideas, etc., infer links and connections between events, deduce causes and effects, and detect such
relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.
12. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings. 13.
Detect culturally specific references and interpret them in a context of the appropriate cultural schemata.
14. Develop and use a battery of reading strategies, such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the
meaning of words from context, and activating schemata fro the interpretation of texts.
Some principal strategies for readi.tg comprehension
c TYPES OF READING
In the previous chapters we saw that both listening and speaking could be subdivided into at least five different types of listening and
speaking performance. In the case of reading, variety of performance is derived more from multiply of types of texts the genres listed
above than from the variety of overt types of performance. Nevertheless, for considering assessment procedures, several types
of reading performance are typically identified, and these will serve as organizers of various assessment tasks.
1. Perceptive.
In keeping with the set of categories specified for listening comprehension, similar specifications are offered here,
except with some differing terminology to capture the uniqueness of reading. Perceptive reading tasks involve attending to components of
larger stretches of discourse letters, words, punctuation, and other 1. Identify your purpose in reading a text.
2. Apply spelling rules and conventions for bottom-up decoding. 3. Use lexical analysis prefixes, roots, suffixes, etc to determine
meaning. 4. Guess at meaning of words, idioms, etc when you arent
certain. 5. Skim the text for the gist and for the main ideas.
6. Scan the text for the specific information names; dates, key words.
7. Use silent reading techniques for rapid processing. 8. Use marginal notes, outlines, charts, or semantic maps for
understanding and retaining information. 9. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
10. Capitalize on discourse markers to process relationships.
graphemic symbols. Bottom-up processing is implied.
2. Selective.
This category is largely an artifact of assessment formats. In order to ascertain ones reading recognition of lexical,
grammatical, or discourse features of language within a very short stretch of language, certain typical are used: picture-cued tasks,
matching, truefalse, multiple-choice, etc. Stimuli include sentences, brief paragraphs, and simple charts and graphs. Brief responses are
intended as well. A combination of bottom-up and top-down processing may be used.
3. Interactive.
Included among interactive reading types are stretches of language of several paragraphs to one page or more in
which the reader must, in a psycholinguistics sense, interact with the text. That is, reading is a process of negotiating meaning the reader
brings to the text a set of schemata for understanding it, and in take .s the product of that interaction. Typical genres that lend themselves
to interactive reading are anecdotes, short narratives and descriptions, excerpts from longer texts, questionnaires, memos,
announcements, directions, recipes, and the like. The focus of an interactive task is to identify relevant features lexical, symbolic,
grammatical, and discourse within texts of moderately short length with the objective of retaining the information that is processed. Top-
down processing is typical of such tasks, although some instance of bottom-up performance may be necessary.
4. Extensive.
Extensive reading, as discussed in this book, applies t texts of more than a page, up to and including professional
articles, essays technical reports, short stories, and books. It should be noted that reading research commonly refers to extensive
reading as longer stretches of discourse such as long articles and books that are usually read outside a classroom hour. massaged a
little in order to encompass any text longer than a page. The purposes of assessment usually are to tap into a learners global
understanding of a text, as opposed to asking test-takers to zoom in on small details. Top-down processing is assumed for most extensive
tasks. The four types of reading are demonstrated in Figure 8.1, which
shows the relationships of length, focus, and processing mode among the four types.
Length Focus
Process Short
Medium Long
Form Meaning
Bottom- Up
Top- Down
Perceptive •• ••
•• Selective
• •
•• •
• •
Interactive ••
• ••
• ••
extensive ••
•• ••
•• strong emphasis • moderate emphasis
Figure 8.1.Types of reading by length, focus, and process
d DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: PERCEPTIVE READING
At the beginning level of reading a second language lies a set of tasks that are fundamental and basic: recognition of alphabetic
symbols, capitalized and lowercase letters, punctuation, words, and grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Such tasks of perception are
often referred to as literacy tasks, implying that the learner is in the early stages of becoming literate. Some learners are already literate
in their own native language, but in other cases the second language may be the first language that they have ever learned to read. This
latter context poses cognitive and some-times age-related issues that need to be considered carefully. Assessment of literacy is no easy
assignment, and if you are interested in this particular challenging area, further reading beyond this book is advised Harp. 1991; Farr
Tone, 1994; Genesee, 1994; Cooper, 1997. Assessment of basic reading skills may be carried out in a number of different ways.
