Definition of Reading

*Reading is understanding the meaning of printed or written material. *Reading readiness encompasses prerequisite skills

*Further reading skills include the following:

*Reading Recognition- correctly pronouncing a word *Reading Comprehension- understanding and attaching meaning to written material.

*Silent Reading- relies on special skills assessed from other types of reading.

Why Do We Assess the Reading ?

~ The overall goal of reading assessment is to inform the teaching and learning process. ~ Reading assessment helps screen students who may have deficits in reading identify and place students with reading disabilities, plan reading instruction and intervention programs, identify present levels of reading performance, assess student progress in reading, and monitor the effectiveness of reading programs.

Reading Genres (Brown, 2004)

1. Academic reading
general interest articles (in magazines, newspaper, etc.) technical reports (e.g., lab reports), professional journal articles references material (dictionaries, etc.) textbooks, theses essays, papers test directions editorials and opinion writing

2. Job-related
messages (e.g., phone messages)
letters/emails

memos (e.g., interoffice)

reports (e.g., job evaluations, project reports) schedules, labels, signs, announcement forms applications, questionnaires financial documents (bill, invoice, etc.) directories (telephone, office, etc.) manuals, directions

3. Personal reading
newspapers and magazines
letters, emails, greeting cards, invitations messages, notes, lists schedules (train, bus, plane, etc.) recipes, menus, maps, calendars

advertisements (commercials, want ads)

novels, short stories, jokes, drama, poetry financial documents (e.g., checks, tax forms, loan applications) forms, questionnaires, medical reports, immigration documents comic strips, cartoons

Besides the reading genres, the micro- and macro skills represent the spectrum of possibilities for objectives in the assessment of reading comprehension (Brown, 2004: pp.187-188)

Reading Strategies (1)

Bottom-up processing (decoding) which employs micro-skills
Discrimination of graphemes & orthographic patterns Recognition & interpretation of words, word classes, patterns, rules, etc. Cohesive devices Making use of formal schema to decode the written text

Reading Strategies (2)

Top-down processing which employs macro-skills
Recognition of rhetorical forms and communicative functions Using background knowledge to make inferences Scanning and skimming, guessing meaning of words from context, activating relevant schemata

Types of Reading Tasks (1)

Perceptive:
Bottom-up processing Decoding letters, words, grapheme symbols, etc. Reading aloud, picture-cued word or sentence identification, etc. (Brown 190-93)

Types of Reading Tasks (2)

Selective:
A combo of bottom-up and top-down processing Formal (lexical and grammatical) aspects of language Formats including multiple-choice, matching, gap-filling

Types of Reading Tasks (3)

Interactive:
Top-down processing (with some instances of bottom-up) More lengthy reading where the reader must interact with the text A process of negotiating meaning Both form-focused and meaning-focused (but more emphasis on meaning comprehension) Cloze, comprehension Qs, editing, short answers, scanning, ordering, info. transfer (graphics interpretation)

Types of Reading Tasks (4)

Extensive:
Top-down processing Global understanding of a text Skimming, summarizing and responding, note-taking and outlining

Criteria for assessing a summary (lmao, 2001, p.184)

1. Express accurately the main idea and supporting ideas. 2. Is written in the students own words; occasional vocabulary from the original text is acceptable. 3. Is logically organized 4. Displays facility in the use of language to clearly express ideas in the text.

Holistic scoring for summarizing and responding to reading

3. Demonstrates clearly, unambiguous comprehension of the main and supporting ideas. 2. Demonstrates comprehension of the main idea but lacks comprehension of some supporting ideas. 1. Demonstrates only a partial comprehension of the main and supporting ideas. 0. Demonstrates no comprehension of the main and supporting ideas

Now Im going to tell you about the Writing Assessment.

Writing Genres
1. Academic writing papers and general subject reports essays, compositions academically focused journals short-answer rest responses technical reports (e.g., reports) theses, dissertations

2. Job-related writing messages (e.g., phone messages) letters/emails memos (e.g., interoffice) reports (e.g., job evaluations, project reports) schedules, labels, signs advertisements, announcements manuals

3. Personal reading
letters, emails, greeting cards, invitations messages, notes, calendar entries, shopping lists, reminders financial documents (e.g., checks, tax forms, loan applications) forms, questionnaires, medical reports, immigration documents diaries, personal journals fiction (e.g., short stories, poetry)

Types of Writing performance

(1). Imitative to spell correctly to perceive phoneme-grapheme correspondences trying to master the mechanics of writing context and meaning are secondary concern form is the primary

(2.) Intensive it is the production of short and simple of written text Examples: dictation of phrases/simple sentences dicto-comp picture description short-answer questions sentence completion tasks

(3) Responsive the tasks require a response to a prompt within a structured framework Examples: paraphrasing guided writing (question/answer) responding to charts, graphs, diagrams responding to a reading or lecture

(4) Extensive the tasks include different purposes and various genre
Examples: essay writing tasks different types of writing (narrative, descriptive, argumentative, persuasive, etc.) task in genres of writing (lab reports, opinion essays, research paper, etc.)

Microskills
1. product graphemes and orthographic patterns of English 2. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose. 3. Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order patterns 4. Use acceptable grammatical systems system (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns, rules 5. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms. 6. Use cohesive devices in written discourse

Macroskills
1. Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse 2. Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts, according to form and purpose 3. Convey links connections between events, and communicative such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification

4. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing

5. Correctly convey culturally specific references in a context of the written text

6. Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the audiences interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with fluency in the first drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using feedback

Scale for writing assessment

6. Demonstrates clear competence in writing on both the rhetorical and syntactic levels, though it may have occasional errors 5. Demonstrates competence in writing on both the rhetorical and syntactic levels, though it will probably have occasional errors 4. Demonstrates minimal competence in writing on both the rhetorical and syntactic levels,

3. Demonstrates some developing competence in writing, but it remains flawed on either the rhetorical and syntactic levels, or both 2. Suggest incompetence in writing 1. Demonstrates in competence in writing 0. A paper is rated 0 if it contains no response, merely copies the topic, is offtopic, is written in a foreign language, or consists only of keystroke characters.