Danissa Fitriamalia Gito - 2001055014

Chapter 3

Testing Grammatical Structure

GENERAL NATURE OF THE ESL STRUCTURE TEST

The native speaker of the language has mastered a grammatical system largely or wholly acceptable
for informal discourse,1 “grammar” tests at least on the high school and college levels have usually
concentrated on matters of style and diction appropriate for rather formal written English. On the
other hand, structure tests for foreign students will have as their purpose the testing of control of
the basic grammatical patterns of the spoken language.

DETERMINATION OF TEST CONTENT

The preparation of a structure test should always begin with the setting up of a detailed outline of
the proposed test content. The outline should specify not only which structures are to be tested, but
the percentage of items to be written around each problem. Selection of the structures to be
included in an achievement test is relatively easy, inasmuch as the class text can and should be used
as the basis for our test. As a rule, the test should include the full range of structures that were
taught in the course, and each structural type should receive about the same emphasis in the test
that it received in the classroom.

ITEM TYPES

(1) Completion (multiple-choice). The most common type of multiple-choice structure item
presents a context in which one or more words are missing, followed by several alternative
completions. The following examples illustrate three versions of this basic type.
Mary (lives) (is living) (has lived) in New York since 1960.
A B C
Mary __________________ in New York since 1960.
A. lives
B. is living C. has lived

"Is Mary Baker still in Chicago?" "No; in New York since 1960
A. she lives C. she's living
B. she'd lived D. she's lived

In terms of space, version 1 is certainly the most economical. Version 2 is felt by some to be
less confusing to the examinees because it does not interrupt the context with the
alternatives, though there appears to be no real evidence that examinees perform more
effectively when the items have this form. Version 3 is favored by many language teachers
and specialists because the dialogue form provides more context and therefore may make
the problem somewhat clearer.

(2) Sentence alternatives (multiple-choice).

 Another item type does away with the item stem altogether and simply presents several
sentences from which the examinee chooses the acceptable version.
A. Mary is living in New York since 1960.
B. Mary lives in New York since 1960.
C. Mary has lived in New York since 1960.

Some test writers and users have expressed a preference for this item type over the
preceding on the grounds that it is less confusing for the examinee to work with complete
sentences. Again, however, there appears to be no strong evidence that students do,
indeed, perform better on this item type.
(3) Sentence interpretation (multiple-choice).
A third type of structure item presents a stimulus and then asks for an interpretation. This
becomes a kind of reading comprehension task in which the crucial clues are structural.

"An old friend of John's family brought him news of his uncle last night."
Him refers to
A. an old friend C. the uncle
B. John

it is important to separate comprehension from production in tests of structure, this item

type may have something to commend it, at least in tests for elementary-level learners.
More advanced students, however, will find such items extremely easy unless the test writer
resorts to very complicated contexts that one would rarely if ever encounter in daily speech.

(4) Scrambled sentence (multiple-choice). For the testing of word order, test writers sometimes
use the device of the scrambled sentence in which the examinee rearranges a jumbled series
of elements so as to form an acceptable sentence. The following is a close imitation of some
of the items that have occurred in sentenceinterpretation tests.

"The friend of the doctor that Charles met when he visited his daughter and her husband
came to the library today." The person who visited the library was
A. the friend D. the daughter
B. the doctor E. the daughter's husband
C. Charles
Sometimes, too, the test writer will deliberately omit punctuation which would provide an
obvious clue to meaning: When ____________________?
A. plan C. to go
B. do D. You

this item type has several drawbacks:

 First, it is extremely difficult to compose items of just the right level of difficulty: the
problems tend to be very easy unless the sentences are made rather long and complex, in
which event the task may become more a test of intelligence than of simple structural
control.
 Secondly, with all but the simplest sentences it is hard to avoid scrambled word groups that
cannot be assembled in a variety of acceptable ways, making the scoring time-consuming
when large numbers of papers are involved. And in multiple-choice testing there is the
 problem of devising a clear and simple way for answers to be recorded on the answer sheet
and to be scored. But more important than any of the above, it seems doubtful whether
anything is reallyaccomplished by the scrambled-sentence technique that cannot be more
effectively and economically achieved by other methods.

(5) Completion (supply type).

Returning to type 1, we may use the completion item type as a fill-in exercise.Pi rections--
Comp1ete the sentences by writing a form of the verb given in parentheses.

Mary _____________________________ (live) in New York since 1960.

Pirections--Complete the sentences by using the prepositions before, during, since.

Mary has been living in New York _____________ 1960.

This item type is extremely useful in informal classroom-testing situations. Such items are
much easier to prepare than the multiplechoice types, and they require a certain amount of
composition on the part of the students. Their disadvantages for large-scale testing are the
same as with all supply types: they are much more time-consuming to score than multiple-
choice items, and there may be several possible correct answers to some of the items so
that different scorers might judge the same response differently.

(6) Conversion (supply type).

Another popular type of short-answer structure test requires the examinees to convert or
transform a series of sentences in a specified manner—by changing them from present to
past tense, from active to passive voice, from singular to plural, and so forth. The comments
given above for item type 5 may be applied to the conversion type as well.

ADVICE ON ITEM WRITING

(1) The language of the dialogues should read like spoken English. Common contractions should
be employed wherever they would normally occur in speech. Avoid constructions usually
found only in formal writing.

Bad item "John got a very poor grade on the test."

" ________________, this would not have happened."
A. He had studied
B. Had he studied
C. He studied
D. He was studying

As it stands, this item would be too formal for a test of spoken English. Changed as follows, it
would be acceptable:
"John got a very poor grade on the test."
"Yes, but that wouldn't have happened if_
A. he'd studied
B. he's studying
C. he studies
 D. he'll study
(2) The second part of the dialogue should sound like a natural response to the first part. Avoid
responses that sound like artificial classroom drills.

Bad item "Can the girls read French?"

"No, Mary can't read French and____________ ."
A. neither can Jane
B. Jane either can't
C. so can't Jane
D. Jane can't, too

The above response to the question would be highly unlikely in normal conversation. The
item could be rewritten as follows:
"Mary can't read French."
"And __________________."
A. neither can Jane
B. Jane either can't
C. so can't Jane
D. Jane can't, too

(3) All distracters should be definitely non-English; care must therefore be taken not to present
regional or social variants of English as “wrong” answers. To help ensure that his distracters
do not contain forms acceptable in another English dialect, the test writer should ask other
native speakers of English to review his items.

Bad item "The maid is coming today."

"Please have her ___________________ the windows in my room."
A. to wash
B. washing
C. to washing
D. wash

Many native English speakers would have no objection to A, “Please have her to wash the
windows.” It should therefore be replaced with a form which all native English speakers
would reject, such as washed.

(4) No distracters should include “errors” which would appear in writing but not in speech.
Bad item "Do you drink coffee?"
"Not any more, but I ____________ ."
A. used to
B. am used to
C. use to
D. used to do

As normally spoken, both A and C would be pronounced alike. The choice of the correct
answer, then, becomes a spelling problem and as such has no place in a test designed to
measure control of the structures of conversational English. The above item could be
salvaged by changing choice C to “used to drink.” Another example would be the form “ 10-
cents stamps,” which in speech could not generally be distinguished from the “ correct”
form, “ 10-cent stamps.” The same problem could be tested safely with a phrase like “2-
dollar(s) pipe.”