All About Writing: DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: IMITATIVE WRITING

Kamis, 17 Juli 2014

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: IMITATIVE WRITING

1. Copying. There is nothing innovative or modern about directing a test-taker to copy letters or words. The test-taker will see something like the following:

Handwriting letters, words, and punctuation marks.

2. Listening cloze selection tasks. These tasks combine dictation with a written script that has a relatively frequent deletion ratio (every fourth or fifth word, perhaps). The test sheet provides a list of missing words from which the test-taker must select. The purpose of this stage is not to test spelling but to give practice in writing. To increase the difficulty, the list of words can be deleted, but then spelling might come an obstacle. Probes look like this:

3. Picture-cued tasks. Familiar pictures are displayed, and test-takers are told to write the word that the picture represents.

4. Form completion tasks. A variation on pictures is the use of a simple form (registration, application, etc.) that asks for name, address, phone number, and other data. Assuming, of course, that prior classroom instruction has focused on filling on such forms, this task becomes an appropriate assessment of simple tasks such as writing one's name and address.

5. Converting numbers and abbreviations to words.

Spelling Tasks and Detecting Phoneme – Grapheme Correspondences

1. Spelling tests.

In a traditional, old-fashioned spelling test, the teacher dictates a simple list of words, one word at a time, followed by the word in a sentence repeated again, with a pause for test-takers to write the word. Scoring emphasize correct spelling. You can help to control for listening errors by choosing words that the students have encountered before—words that they have spoken or heard in their class.

2. Picture-cued tasks.

Pictures are displayed with the objective of focusing on familiar words whose spelling maybe unpredictable. Items are chosen according to the objectives of the assessment, but this format is an opportunity to present some challenging words and word pairs: boot/book, read/reed, bit/bite, etc.

3. Multiple-choice techniques.

Presenting words and phrases in the form of a multiple-choice task risks crossing over into the domain of assessing reading, but if the items have a follow-up writing component, they can serve as formative reinforcement of spelling conventions. They might be more challenging with the addition of homonyms.

Test-takers read: