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According to you how should reading skills assessed, why?


Diskusi 5 Assessment in Language Teaching

According to you how should reading skills assessed, why?

Answer:

Reading is an activity or interaction between the reader and the text to get information from the text. Reading is one of the receptive skills, where the reader comprehends and decodes the contents of the written material he reads (Fachrurrazy & Tresnadewi,2019).  Reading assessments are designed to provide feedback on skills, processes, and resource knowledge that represent reading comprehension (Thomas & Verghis, 2018). So, we should assess reading skills in order to get information about the progress of the learners toward what they have learned and read. 

Thomas & Verghis (2018) mentioned that there are 5 purposes for reading assessment stated as follows:  

  • Reading - proficiency assessment (standardized testing) 
  • Reading- proficiency assessments are important in understanding a student's overall reading comprehension and determining whether the student is adequately prepared for continued learning and educational progress. This kind of testing is called standardized testing. It is also used to place students, make policy decisions, change curriculum, or evaluate programs, teachers, or institutions.
  • Assessment of classroom learning 
  • Assessment for learning (supporting student learning is the purpose) 
  • Assessment for curricular purposes 
  • Assessment for research purposes

Alderson's opinion in Apsari & Haryudin (2017) states that there is no best method to test reading. However, there are some common reading assessment measures including multiple-choice, written and oral memory, cloze, summary, sentence completion, short answers, open-ended questions, true/false, matching activities, checklists, ordering, and filling out blank tests (Apsari & Haryudin, 2017). The researcher states that the results of each individual's assessment task provide a limited representation of reading comprehension (Alderson in Apsari & Haryudin, 2017).

The test construction can be based on the classification of micro and macro skills, or Barret’s taxonomy (Fachrurrazy and Tresnadewi, 2019). Fachrurrazy and Tresnadewi (2019) mentioned that reading assessment tasks are divided into three levels, they are:

  • word level, the tasks used to comprehend forms and meanings at the word level, such as the tasks used to measure the ability to identify the part of speech of a word, the ability to get meaning, word meaning from a context, etc.
  • sentence level, this task is used to identify the ability to get meaning from a sentence, such as getting sentence meaning from different sentence constructions, phrasal expressions, etc. 
  • and discourse level, this task is used to measure the ability to get meaning from the wider context of a sentence. It can be genres in paragraphs or essays. For example TOEFL, IELTS, and TOEIC. 

Davies at Alderson (2000) defined eight subskills for reading processes. They are as follows:

1) Memorize word meanings

2) Guess word meanings in context

3) Find answers to clearly answered or paraphrased questions

4) Put thoughts into context Weave in

5) Infer Content

6) Recognize Writer's Intent, Attitude, Tone, and Mood

7) Recognize Writing Style

8) Follow the Passage Structure

In my opinion, I assess reading comprehension using various techniques such as answering main idea questions (this is used to identify topic sentences), short answer questions (it is used to answer in short not more than two or three words), matchmaking tests, multiple choice, true-false questions, note completion, and summaries and retelling. 

References:

Fachrurrazy and Tresnadewi, Sintha. 2019. Buku Materi Pokok MPBI 5201/ 3SKS/ Modul 1-9: Assessment in Language Teaching. Tangerang Selatan, Banten: Universitas Terbuka.

Alderson, J. C. 2000. Assessing Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Thomas. S and Verghis. L. 2018. Reading Assessment.  Accessed at https://www.ijr\ar.org/papers/IJRAR1944386.pdf 

Apsari, Y., & Haryudin, A. (2017). THE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH LECTURERS’CLASSROOM-BASED READING ASSESSMENTS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’READING COMPREHENSION. Eltin Journal: Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia, 5(1), 35-44.