TESTING READING

What IS READING?
grasping meaning through its written
representation
an active interaction among the reader,
the text, and the context to construct
meaning
The process of understanding meaning

READING
STRATEGY
 Information flow Information flow
Meaning
Print
SEMANTIC AND
DECISION GRAPHOPHONIC
SYNTACTIC
CENTER INFORMATION
INFORMATION
Meaning Print

Information Processing in Interactive Models of Reading

Source: Vacca, Jo Anne, et al., 1987.

INTERACTIVE PROCESSING: The act of reading is triggered

by the reader’s prior knowledge and experience as well as
graphophonic information in order to derive meaning from print.
Interactive models suggest that the process of reading is
initiated by formulating hypothesis about meaning and by
simultaneously decoding letters and words
Read the text.

Understanding atoms is key to understanding the

physical world. More than 100 different elements
exist in nature, each with its own unique atomic
makeup. The atoms of these elements react with
one another and combine in different ways to
form a virtually unlimited number of chemical
compounds. When two or more atoms combine,
they form a molecule. For example, two atoms of
the element hydrogen (abbreviated H) combine
with one atom of the element oxygen (O) to form
a molecule of water (H20).
The abilities needed in reading
1. Language and graphic symbol
a. Comprehending a large percentage of the
lexical items occurring in non-specialized writing
and being able derive meaning of unfamiliar
items from the context in which they occur
b. Understanding the syntactical patterns and
morphological forms characteristic of the written
language and following the longer and more
involved stretches of language (sentences and
sequences of sentences) occurring in formal
writing
c. Responding correctly to the graphic symbols of
writing (e.g. punctuation, capitalization,
paragraphing, italicizing) used to convey and
clarify meaning.
2. Ideas
a. Identifying the writer’s purpose and central idea
b. Understanding the subordinate ideas which
support the thesis
c. Drawing correct conclusions and valid inferences
from what is given

3. Tone and Style

a. Recognizing the author’s attitude toward the
subject and the reader: understanding the tone of
the writing
b. Identifying the methods and stylistic devices by
which the author conveys his ideas
• In practice, the abilities are mutually dependent
Example: a writer may elect to use humor (3a)
to make the reader aware of some common
human failing (2a), conveying the ludicrousness
of this human behavior by an unusual selection
of lexical items (1a)
• A good reader is one who can respond
simultaneously – and appropriately – to the
language, ideas, and stylistic of mature writing,
and, moreover, can achieve these
understanding with reasonable speed and
fluency
SELECTION OF THE TEST PASSAGES
Length
If samples of various kinds of material are
used, the passages should be brief but
sufficient to yield 6 to 7 comprehension
questions (100 – 250 words)
Subject matter
• it is determined by the purpose of the test
• not require outside subject-matter information
to be fully comprehended – all should be in
the text
• the passages should not deal with information
that is universally known
Style and treatment of subject

Good passages are those which:

• deal cronologically with a series of events
• Compare or contrast two or more people,
objects, or events
• present an author’s individualistic opinions on
a familiar subject

Do not choose passages which make just one

clear, direct point
Language
• The language of the passages in a reading
test should not be overloaded with:
a. extremely difficult lexical items
b. extremely complex syntactical structures
• Extremely difficult lexical items and complex
syntactical structures should be simplified
somewhat to bring them within reach of at
least the more proficient students
• The simplification should be controlled: not
so easy that it fails to discriminate among
students
TYPES OF READING COMP. TEST
General type:
reading test consists of a number of passages
of varying styles and contents, each followed by
a series of multiple choice items
Initial stages of reading: matching test
1. Word matching: the student is required to
underline the letter, word or phrase which is
the same as the letter, word or phrase
on the left/model
Example:
1. Word matching
Model Alternatives
b p/ d/ q/ h/ b
now bow/ not/ how/ now/ mow
sheep shop/ shape/ sleep/ heap/ sheep
ever never/ over/ ever/ fewer/ even
2. Sentence matching
The student is required to recognize as
quickly as possible sentences which consist
of the same words in the same order

Tom is not going to your school.

A. Tom is not going to your school.
B. Tom is going to your school.
C. Tom is not coming to your school.
D. Tom is comng to your school.
3. Pictures and sentence matching
Type 1a
The testee looks and then reads a
sentence about one of the pictures He is
required to identify the correct picture

A B C D
He is kicking a ball.
Type 1b
In this type there are three (or more)
pictures. Only one of the pictures is matched with the
sentence.
He is boiling a water.
Alternative 1
The options are in the target language
He is boiling water.
A. making hot B. putting in C. drinking
Alternative 2
The options are in the native language
He is boiling water.
A. merebus B. menuang C. minum
It is a bright son you have here.

A B C
A. The teacher is showing a picture.
B. Peter is pointing to the book.
C. The children are showing a book.
D. Ann is pointing to the book
E. The children are playing.
Other types of reading comprehension test
 True/False reading tests
• Advantages:
– Appropriate for class progress tests, because
it is easier to construct than m-c
– A short passage can provide a basis for
numerous items
– Can be used as a valuable teaching device
with which students’ attention can be directed
to the salient points in the passage
• Two main disadvantages:
– Encourage guessing
– May fail to discriminate among the students
• One way of overcoming the disadvantages
of True/False item tests:
• To penalize the testee for guessing, by giving
instruction such as:
Each correct answer will be awarded two
marks. However, for each wrong answer, one
mark will be deducted from your score. It is
better, therefore, not to guess blindly and to
leave blank if you do not know the correct
answer.
• Types of True/False items
• Type 1: independent on a reading text
• Type 2: dependent on a reading text
• Independent True/False items
Put a circle around the letter T if the statement
is True. If it is not true, put a circle around the
letter F.
1. Fish can’t fly, but birds can T F
2. When ice melts, it turns into water. T F

• Dependent True/False items

– Provide an appropriate passage
– Make some statements related with the passage
– Students are instructed to decide whether each of
the statement is True or False
 According to the passage, six of the following
statements are true and six are false. Put a tick √
in the box after each true statement and a cross x
in the box after each false statement.

Reading Passage

1. Looking at someone else’s eyes or looking □

away from them means a person is
thinking very deeply.
2. If two people look too long at each other’s □
eyes, they will usually become
embarrassed.
 Multiple Choice
Type 1
The type of item in this section is in many ways a test
of vocabulary rather than of reading
comprehension.
1. The eyes are wonderful teachers - even
musicians, who deal with sound, learn as much
by (doing, playing, watching, practicing) as by
listening..
2. Two-thirds of the country’s (fuel, endeavor,
industry, energy) comes from imported oil, while
the remaining one-third comes from coal.
Moreover, soon the country will have its first
nuclear power station.
Type 2
• If the previous item type is closely related to the testing of
vocabulary, this type is perhaps more accurately described
as a test of comprehension of grammatical structure.
• The testees are required to identify the correct paraphrase
of a statement from a choice of four or five.
• The testees are told in the rubric that the (four) statements
may refer to the entire sentence or only part of the
sentence.

Example
John is not as tall as Miss Green but he’s a little taller than
Bill.
A. Miss Green is taller than John and Bill.
B. John is not as tall as Bill.
C. Miss Green is taller than John but not so tall as Bill.
D. Bill is taller than John and Miss Green.
Type 3
• This item type consists of a very short reading extract of
only a few sentences (or some- times of only one
sentence).
• The testees are required to answer only one
comprehension test item on each reading passage.

The president was talking to a young woman in the crowd

when Bill suddenly caught sight of a man standing several
yards behind her. The man had something in his hand: it
was a short stick.

What made Bill notice the man in the crowd?

A. He was very close to Bill.
B. The president was talking to him.
C. He was standing in front of the woman.
D. He was carrying a stick.
 Multiple Choice items: longer texts
• the length of the reading texts recommended:
 50 to 100 words for the elementary level
 200 to 300 words for the intermediate level
 400 to 600 words for the advanced level
• the length of the texts should also be related to
its level of difficulty: a complex passage would be
shorter than a more straightforward one
• the difficulty level of the text should be
appropriate with the students’ proficiency in
English
• the difficulty level of the text depends on the
degree of the structural and lexical complexity of
the language used
• the number of items depends on the length
and complexity of the text
• construct more items than are actually
required, because discarded items cannot be
easily replaced as in the case of testing
vocabulary and grammar
• the reasonable time needed to finish each
item is one or two minutes, including the time
needed to read the text
Advice on multiple choice item writing
a. The vocabulary and syntax of the items should
be kept as simple as possible
b. The stem of the item should be clear: what
kind of information is being asked for
Bad item
John
A. obviously liked what he heard
B. became angry upon hearing Mary’s words
C. didn’t understand what he was told
D. ridiculed Mary’s ideas

 the stem above offers no clues to the reader as to

what he is being asked
The above item might be rewritten as follows:
It was clear from John’s reaction to Mary’ speech
that he …
A. agreed completely with what she had said
B. found her remarks highly insulting
C. really didn’t understand what she had said
D. considered her ideas to be quite foolish

c. Selection of the correct answer should involve

interpretation of the passage, not merely matching
the words in the choices with the same words in
the passage
Example:
Original text
At four a clock on September 30th two men armed with iron
bars attacked a soldier in Green Street.

What happened at four o’clock on September 30th?

A. Two men armed with iron bars attacked a soldier
B. etc.

First revision
At four o’clock on September 30th two neminsi
deraden with rinot babblers tacklened a derisoldt.

What happened at four o’clock on September 30th?

A. Two neminsi deraden with rinot babblers
tacklened a derisoldt.
B. Etc.
• Without knowing the meanings of the words
neminsi, deraden, rinot etc. which seem to
be not English, the testee can accurately
decides that choice A is the correct answer.

• A slightly better item stem would be:

What happened one afternoon at the end of
September?

• However, to be completely satisfactory, it

would be necessary to re-write both the text
and the item, as in the following example:
After the second revision

Tom was surprised when he met Ann at the party.

He was under the impression she had gone away
from the locality. The last time he saw her was
when Bob was teaching her to drive. A few days
afterwards she had suddenly became ill.

 (First version)
Tom was surprised when
A. Ann went away
B. he met Ann at the party
C. Bob was teaching Ann to drive
D. Ann suddenly became ill
 (Second version)
Tom did not expect to see Ann because
A. he knew she was at the party
B. he thought she had left the district
C. he had seen Bob teaching her to drive
D. he had heard she was ill
d.
 All items should require careful reading of
the paragraph.
 It should not be possible to answer the items
correctly purely on the basis of outside
knowledge or
 to eliminate the wrong options because they
are clearly illogical or because they conflict
with one another

Example:
Bad item
We may infer from this paragraph that people
A. all need the same kind of rest
B. do not usually need rest
C. rest much more than they should
D. do not all rest in the same way

• Choice B is patently absurd and can therefore be

dismissed without reference to the passage.
• Choice A and D are clearly opposites, leading the
test-wise examinee to suspect that one of them is
the correct answer.
 The above item, which appear in a reading test for
foreign students, shows how poor items can often
be answered by pure reason without reading the
passages on which they are based.
 This item might be rewritten:
The central idea of the paragraph is that people
A. cannot maintain good health without proper
rest
B. do not all rest in precisely the same way
C. tend to get more rest than they actually
need
D. can rest better after they have had exercise

 As revised, all four choices appear logical

 The examinee must therefore understand
the paragraph to know which of them
constituted the central idea
e. The correct option must be roughly the same length as
the distractors. In the following test item the correct
option has been modified to such a degree that it
appears as the obvious answer without even
necessitating any reference to the text.

The curriculum at the new college is a good one in

many ways because it
A.includes many science courses
B. offers a well-balanced program in both the
humanities and the science
C. is realistic
D.consists of useful technical subject
f. All the option must be grammatically correct: Option D in
the following item can be ruled out immediately because it is
ungrammatical.
The writer says that he had studied engineering for
A. a long time
B. only very short period
C. several years
D. never

g. Double negative only confusing and such items as the

following (based on the previous page) are best avoided.

Tom did expect to see Ann because

A. he did not know she was at the party
B. no one knew she had left the district
C. he hadn’t seen Bob teaching her to drive
D. he didn’t realize she was well
h.A useful device in multiple-choice test of reading
comprehension is the option ALL OF THESE or
NONE OF THESE:
E.g.
According to the passage, what do some people
think there should be outside a modern city
A. Buses
B. Car parks
C. Office buildings
D. Taxis
E. ALL OF THESE
  Completion Items
•
Completion items measure recall rather than recognition
• Usually, completion items require the testee to supply a
word or a short phrase.
• Unless great care is taken to ensure that there is only one
correct answer, the marking will prove very difficult
when the tester is confronted with a variety of answers
ranging from acceptable to unacceptable.
• All valid interpretations, whether or not these were in the
test writer’s mind at the time of the construction of the
test, must be regarded as correct.
Compare:
1. Why was the author surprised to meet Dr. Short?

and the equivalent completion item:

2. The author was surprised to meet Dr. Short

because ...............

• There is very little difference between the two

open-ended questions in test of reading
comprehension
• Although such items are supply-type items, they
are often regarded as belonging more to the
objective test
• Types of completion reading tests
Type 1:
consisting of blanks for completion in the
items following the text
Type 2:
consisting of blanks in the text
Type 1
256 Weeton Road,
2nd Floor
Hongkong
7th June, 1974
Dear David,
I am very sorry that I could not meet you last night. I hope that you did not wait too
long outside the New York Theatre. I had to look after my small brother until my mother
returned home. She was long time at the doctor’s and she arrived home very late. I ran
all the way to the bus-stop, but I had already missed the bus. I decided to get on a tram
and I arrived at the New York Theatre at eight o’clock. I did not think that you would
still be there because I was three-quarters of an hour late. I do hope that you will forgive
me.
Your friend,
Peter

Write one word or more in each blank.

1. Peter lives at .............................................................................................
2. He wrote the letter on ...............................................................................
3. Peter could not leave home because he had to wait for .....
Type 2 (a)
• In this item type the testees is required to complete the
blank spaces in a reading text.
• The blanks have been substituted for what the test writer
considers are the most significant content words.
• Consequently, a possible weakness of such a test may result
from the failure to supply adequate guidelines to the testee;
the following is an example of a poor item because the
framework is insufficient to guide the testee.

When we (1) ....... something along the (2) .........., it will

cause (3) .........

• The linguistic clues are thus inadequate and the testee is

faced with the task of having to guess what was in the
examiner’s mind.
• The following text illustrates how blanks should be
interspersed
• the testee’s degree of success in completing the blanks
depends almost entirely on his comprehension of the text.

When we slide something along the floor,it will cause

(1)........... . If something is very (2) ............ , there will be a
lot of friction between it and the ground. However, friction
is (3) .............. When something rolls instead of
(4) ............... the invention of the (5) ............... was really an
attempt to reduce friction. Unless there is snow or ice, it is
much harder to pull something on a (6) ................ than in a
cart. Ball-bearings are used a lot in mechinery to
(7) ............. friction. It is … etc.
Type 2 (b)
• In some tests certain letters of missing words are given.

• In these cases, the testee is generally informed that each

dash in the blank signifies a letter.
E.g.
The mighty Amazon f---s into the Atlantic near the Equator:
its es----y is about 170 miles wide. The w--th— is often so
misty that the b---s of the river cannot be seen from a ship,
even if it is p-s---g quite to them.

• In one widely used test of English proficiency only the initial

letter of the missing word given, e.g.

Unlike the Arctic c..........., the Antarctic c................ no land

animals at all. It has also very few p................ of any kind.
However, there is an infinite n.............. of f................an d
b..................... along the whole c.................... of the
Antarctic.
Type 2 (c)
• A variation of this type of reading comprehension may
incorporate the multiple-choice technique, e.g.

Astrology is the ancient (1) ................ of telling what will

(2) ............. in the future by studying the (3) ........... of the
stars and planets. (4) ............ astrologers thought that he
stars and planets influenced the (5) ............. of men, they
claimed they could tell (6) ..................

1. system business magic study art

2. coincide happen chance come foretell
3. Places shapes times positions light
4. However Because Although For While
5. affairs matters business chances times
6. horoscopes futures advice fortunes luck
Cloze Procedures
 although similar in appearance to completion
items, cloze test should not be confused with
simple blank-filling tests
 in ordinary completion tests the words for
deletion are selected subjectively (consisting
largely of structural words in certain tests and
key content words in other tests)
 in cloze tests the words are deleted
systematically
 once the actual text has been chosen, the
construction of a cloze test is quite objective:
every ninth word is deleted by the test writer
 The 5th, 6th, and 7th words are the most widely favoured for
deletion in cloze tests.
 The cloze test, which was originally intended to measure
reading difficulty, has been applied to first language testing
of reading comprehension for some time now.
 Only recently, however, have constructors of foreign
language tests started using the cloze procedure.
 The principle is based on the Gestalt theory of “closure”
(closing gaps in patterns subconsciously) and thus cloze
tests measure the reader’s ability to decode “interrupted” or
“mutilated” massages by making the most acceptable
substitutions from all the contextual clues available.
 The length of the text, itself, is generally about the same as
that of texts used for multiple-choice reading items.
 a reasonable number of deletions is around forty or fifty
blanks.
 The more blanks contained in a text, the more reliable the
test will prove.
Scoring in cloze tests
 Methods
1. One mark is given for each acceptable answer
2. Only exact answer will be marked
• both methods have been found reliable
• no student should be penalized for mis-
spelling unless a word is so badly spelt that it
cannot be understood.
• where possible, the testee should be
required to fill each blank in the text itself: not
to write the deleted items on a separate
answer sheet or list
• it is always advantageous to provide a “lead-in”:
thus no deletions should be made in the first
few sentences so that the testee has a chance
to become familiar with the author’s style and
approach to the subject of the text.
• instructions for students engaged on cloze tests
should make certain that they fully understand
the problem which is being tested.
• the students should be advised to read quickly
through the text in order to become familiar with
the general meaning before completing each
blank
THANKS