Menguji Kemampuan Keseluruhan

Biasanya kita memperoleh informasi terpisah tentang pengujian kemampuan yang berbeda, ada kalanya
kita tidak memerlukan informasi rinci seperti itu, ketika perkiraan kemampuan keseluruhan siswa sudah
cukup.  Sebelum melihat teknik untuk melakukan ini, ada baiknya memberikan sedikit pemikiran tentang
konsep itu sendiri. Ada dua faktor yang mempengaruhi teknik yang digunakan:

 Gagasan tentang kemampuan keseluruhan secara langsung berkaitan dengan gagasan akal sehat
bahwa seseorang dapat menjadi baik (cukup baik, atau buruk) pada suatu bahasa dan bahwa
seseorang pandai dalam suatu bahasa karena kinerja dalam satu keterampilan biasanya
merupakan prediktor kinerja yang wajar dalam keterampilan lain.
 Pengurangan redundansi, yang memperkirakan kemampuan siswa secara keseluruhan dengan
mengukur seberapa baik mereka dapat mengembalikan teks yang direduksi ke bentuk aslinya

Varieties of cloze procedure

          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 ability because they were
easy to construct, administer and score.

 Reports of early research seemed to suggest that it didn’t matter which passage was chosen or
which words were deleted because they would still be a reliable and valid test of learners’
underlying language abilities. 

 Unfortunately, it turned out that different passages gave different results, as did the deletion of
different sets of words in the same passage. 

  The validity of the procedure was brought into question and is agreed that the cloze procedure
cannot be depended upon automatically to produce reliable and useful tests.

  There is a need for careful selection of texts, pre-testing and even careful deletion of certain
words in order to make the test valid.

Selected Deletion Cloze

          Deletions in this kind of procedure are chosen to provide ‘interesting’ items. Another feature is
that native speakers of the same general academic ability as. Students for whom the test was intended
could be expected to provide acceptable responses to all of the items, with the acceptable responses
themselves being limited in number.

Conversational Cloze

 If we want our measure of overall ability to reflect (and hopefully predict) oral as well as written
ability, we can use passages which represent spoken language.

 This way, we can easily predict the oral ability of students who have had exposure to the
language.

  This is why we should base cloze tests on passages that reflect the kind of language that is
relevant for the overall ability we are interested in.

Advice on creating cloze type passages

1. The chosen passages should be at a level of difficulty appropriate to the people who are to take
the test. If there is doubt about the level, a range of passages should be selected for trialling.
2. The text should be of a style appropriate to the kind of language ability being tested.
3.  After a couple of sentences of uninterrupted text, deletions should be made at about every
eighth or tenth word (pseudo-random method of deletion). Individual deletions an then be
moved a word or two to left or right, to avoid problems or to create interesting ‘items’. One may
deliberately make gaps that can only be filled by reference to the extended context.
4.  The passages should be tried out on a good number of comparable native speakers and the
range of acceptable responses are to be determined.
5. Clear instructions should be devised. Students should be assured that no one can possibly
replace all the original words exactly, and should be encouraged to begin by reading the passage
right through to get an idea of what is being conveyed.
6. Scorers are given a card with the acceptable responses written in such a way as to lie opposite
the students’ responses.
7.  Anyone who is to take a cloze test should have had several opportunities to become familiar with
the technique. The more practice they have had, the more likely it is that their scores will
represent their true ability in the language.
8. Cloze tests scores are not directly interpretable. We need to have some other measure against
which they can be validated.

Mini-cloze items
  These may take various forms, such as the exchange between two or more people with just one
gap.

 In this way, we can cover just the structures and vocabulary that we want to, and include
whatever features of spoken language are relevant to our purpose. The one disadvantage by
comparison with more normal cloze is that the context that must be taken into account in order
to fill a gap correctly is very restricted, but for such purposes as placement testing, this would
not seem a serious defect.

The C-test

 Instead of whole words, it is the second half of every word that is deleted.

 The supposed advantages of the C-Test over the more traditional cloze procedure are that only
exact scoring is necessary (native speakers effectively scoring 100 per cent) and that shorter
(and so more) passages are available.

  This last point means that a wider range of topics, styles and levels of ability are possible.

  The possible disadvantages relate to the nature of the task. It is harder to read than a cloze
passage, and correct responses can often be found in the surrounding text.

          

Dictation

 Dictation tests give results similar to those obtained from cloze tests. In predicting overall ability
they have the advantage of involving listening ability.

 When using dictation, the same considerations should guide the choice of passages as with the
cloze procedure.

  The passage has then to be broken down into stretches that will be spoken without a break.

  These should be fairly long, beyond rote memory, so that the candidates will have to decode,
store, and then re-encode what they hear.

          While being easy to create and relatively easy to administer, they are difficult to score. Because of
this, partial dictation may be considered as an alternative. In this, part of what is dictated is simply to fill
in the gaps. It is then clear just what level the student is up to, and scoring is likely to be more reliable.

Mini-partial-dictation items
          Dictation suffers from the same disadvantage as cloze. For that reason, a series of mini-dialogues
(possibly mixed with monologues) of the following kind can be constructed. The student sees:

                   A: when can I see you again?

                   B: how about _______ Thursday?

And hears:

                   When can I see you again?

                   How about a week on Thursday?