APPLIED LINGUISTICS for BA Students in English
EVALUATION
Tests of grammar and usage
The most common task types (Heaton, 1995)
The majority of these types are discrete point items
Multiple choice items
The police charged the man ……. robbing the bank.
A. for B on C with D at
They consist of the stem, which presents the problem clearly and concisely and there are three or four options given. The stem can be an incomplete statement, a complete statement and a question.
Error-recognition multiple choice items
My car had broken down, so I went there by foot.
A B C D
Rearrangement items
Not only …………………………………………………………
/the examination/very difficult/unfair/was/but/it/was/also
The test taker has to unscramble the sentence and write out the sentence by putting the words in their correct order.
Completion items
That car belongs ………… my brother. (blank completion)
She ……….. (come) home late yesterday (blank and cue)
They involve production not mere recognition, as they test the ability to put the most appropriate word in the blanks in the sentences, or in a text.
Transformation items
There are two alternatives; the sentence has to be changed according to a given pattern or by using selected words
I haven’t seen her for a year.
It’s a year ……………………
It’s no use calling her now, she’s on holiday. (point)
………………………………………………………………………
Joining elements (combination items)
A pair of sentences is to be joined using the word given. In some cases they involve quite mechanical responses.
Some questions were difficult. They weren’t answered by several candidates. (WHICH)
Addition items
Students are to insert the given word in the most appropriate place in the sentence
The children were alone at home in the evenings (OFTEN)
Cloze procedure
Not all objective task types are discrete-point. There are techniques which require the test taker to combine many elements of the language to perform the task. These techniques are called integrative or global. A widely used technique is cloze procedure. A text is taken and words are deleted form it at intervals. The test taker is to restore the missing part. It can be regarded integrative because each cloze test can contain a large number of items, it operates beyond sentence level and gives a full context for each item, and the test taker has to employ a wide range of language skills (lexical, grammatical, cohesive, semantic, contextual and predictive) to fill in the missing item.
There are different forms of cloze procedure
Traditional (also called mechanical deletion) cloze, in which words are deleted at regular intervals, every sixth, seventh or eighth word.
Modified (also called selected deletion) cloze, in which the words are deleted at irregular intervals depending on the test focus. All deletions may focus on the same language point or different but specific language points e.g. past tense forms, prepositions
Multiple-choice cloze, which is an easier version of a traditional or modified cloze, where several options are offered for each gap.
Banked cloze, in which the deleted words are listed below the gapped text, usually in an alphabetical order.
Authentic cloze, which is a version of a traditional cloze, where a number of letters are cut off from the beginning or/and of each line. The text looks as if it has been clipped in a photocopier.
C-test, in which every second word in a text is partially deleted, leaving the first half of the deleted word.
Cloze elide, where words which do not belong there are inserted in the text and test takers have to find where the insertions are.
