How to Evaluate

Vocabulary and

Pronunciation…

How to Evaluate

Vocabulary …

• Vocabulary is important in oral reading instruction and word knowledge is critical to comprehension. Vocabulary activities should be designed to activate prior knowledge to be combined with new knowledge.

• Although children develop most of their vocabulary indirectly through such activities as reading, writing, listening, they need to learn words directly through explicit instruction on word instruction and word learning strategies in order to

comprehend oral and written text.

• The scientific research on vocabulary suggests that children learn words indirectly in three ways: engaging in daily oral language, listening to adults read to them, and reading extensively on their own.

• Vocabulary assessment should be varied, meaningful, and match instruction. For example: How do you decide which words to test? What does it mean to know a word? How do you actually test the word?

• Students should be provided with activities that require them to recognize and generate attributes, characteristics, examples, and non-examples of a concept.

• Learning about the origins of words, idioms, and sayings are helpful for students learning the English language.

• The assessment of students' vocabulary development should be varied and meaningful. lists the following indicators of students' vocabulary development:

• An increased sense of word play;• A heightened awareness of how words

sound (rhyme, repetitive language patterns);

• A more diverse and richer use of language in speech and writing.

• An ability to construct semantic maps to extend an understanding of words and concepts.

• As Steven Tchudi explains, assessment uses descriptions rather than judgments of readers and writers and is formative, or in process, rather than summative or final. Evaluation, on the other hand, is summative. When we evaluate students' vocabulary growth, we compare students' use of vocabulary to an established benchmark or standard of expected student performance at a particular point in time.

• So, when we say we are assessing students' vocabulary growth, we are involved in data collection.

• When we evaluate students' vocabulary growth, we are placing a value on that data based on the Sunshine State Standards and Benchmarks.

• There are three problems with assessing vocabulary. First, how do you decide which words to test? Second, what does it mean to know a word, and third, how do you actually test the word?  Johnson (2001) suggests that depending upon the test format you decide to use, different information would be gathered.

• A student may be able to draw an illustration of a word, but unable to identify a synonym.

• Students need to be able to demonstrate word knowledge on tests. Teachers should provide students with practice in common vocabulary testing formats. Johnson (2001) recommends three formats to acquaint students with:  

• Given a list of three or four words, which one does not belong?

• Choose the word that best fits in the sentence.

• Given a list of three or four words, choose the closest in meaning to fit in the sentence.

• Vocabulary assessment should be varied, meaningful, and match instruction where teachers assess vocabulary in their classrooms using written work, cloze passages, hinky pinkies (riddles), memory games, teacher tests, and by asking students directly. Johnson offers some suggestions for testing word knowledge. 

We could ask to Students:• Read the word and circle a picture of it. • Look at a picture and circle the word for it. • Read the word and circle a definition. • Read the word and circle a synonym. • Read the word and circle an antonym. • Read the word in context and circle a definition,

synonym, or antonym. • Read a sentence and write the missing word. • Read a sentence and supply the missing word

orally. • Read the word and draw a picture or tell about it. • Read the word and put it in a category. • Find the word in a category in which it doesn't belong.

Formative assessment strategies that teachers

can use to document students' vocabularydevelopment include:• Anecdotal records. • Student work samples. • Checklists. • Portfolios that include students' engaging in goal-setting and reflection on their learning over time.

Anecdotal Records

Teachers take notes during class time as they listen for students to use target vocabulary during class discussions. While reading student writing, teachers take notes on students' use or misuse of target vocabulary or word elements such as roots and affixes.

Students' Work SamplesStudents select samples of their writing at pre-determined times during a grading period. These samples are stored in writing folders, notebooks, or in students' literacy portfolios. Together, teachers and students can examine writing samples at the end of each report card period to note differences in students' use of words studied. Then, teachers assist students to set reasonable goals for learning vocabulary during the nextgrading period.

Checklists• Teachers create checklists of vocabulary

skills such as a list of root words and affixes they will be teaching. Then, near the middle and again near the end of each grading period, teachers examine student writing using the checklist. They place a check by each of the new roots or affixes students use in their writing. By examining each student's use of the desired vocabulary, teachers are able to

plan vocabulary instruction to meet students' needs.

Portfolios• Students select samples of their work

(writing assignments, quizzes, tests, etc.) and organize them in a portfolio. Near the end of each grading period, teachers conference with students about their work.

• Using the evidence collected in the portfolio, teachers and students determine if students have met their established goals for

that grading period. Together, they establish new goals.

How to Evaluate

Pronunciation…

Evaluating students in a pronunciation class can be difficult. Not only because you have students with varied needs and starting points, but pronunciation and comprehensibility are by nature a subjective concept.

When teachers want to evaluate pronunciation, they should take into

account…• Biological Factors: Command of foreign

language phonology also taps into the neuromuscular domain, which may play a crucial role.

• Personality Factors: Linguistic expectations of interlocutors, ego permeability, attitude toward the foreign language, and type of motivation all have their share in the development of pronunciation skills.

• Sociocultural Factors: People from some cultural backgrounds (for example, speakers of Japanese or Chinese) often think that it is impossible for them to pronounce English well.

• Mother Tongue Influence: Among other things, the sound system of learners' mother tongue might be transported into the foreign language in different ways.

• Setting Realistic Goals: Attempting to completely eradicate a foreign accent in an EFL class is an unrealistic goal. It would be more reasonable to bring learners up to a point where they do not make pronunciation mistakes that would affect their being understood.

What to test?The suggested points to be tested are: • Stage 1: Find or prepare a linguistic analysis of the

sound system of the language to be learned and a similar description of the language of the learner.

• Stage 2: Compare the two sound systems phoneme by phoneme in order to locate, describe the points of difficulty.

The comparison of each phoneme should include at least three requests. First, does the native language have a similar phoneme? For example in comparing the sound system of English with that of Kusien, a language spokenby about 2000 people in the easternmost part of the Caroline Island, we should find that English /d/ as in day has no counter part in this language.

• Stage 3: Prepare the list of problems to be tested. Since the problems will differ somewhat for production and recognition, different lists are necessary to test the student's pronunciation in speaking and in listening.

• Stages 4&5: Production and recognition levels.

Some Activities to Assess Pronunciation:

Sound-Production:It is the testing of learner's ability to distinguish between contrastive sounds but it does not mean testing his ability to pronounce English accurately.Pictures can be used with verbal instructions as stimuli as demonstrated below: Example: What is he doing? Possible responses are:

1. He is reading. 2. The man is reading. 3. He is reading a newspaper.

Reading out aloud a passage containing the pronunciation problems to be tested is a simple uniform method but not consistent enough, because of the extraneous factor of another variable, namely theability to read.

Dictation:

A dictation exercise may appear in different forms. First, it may consist of a whole passage incorporating target words to be tested. It may also consist of a set of individual words incorporating the segmental or stress features being tested. A third interesting type of dictation consists in a cloze test: the test is given a text from which target words have been removed and replaced by blanks; the examiner reads the full passage and the students fills in the blanks with the words he has heard. One precaution to take here is that the context should be as neutral as possible; a context that is too supportive will cause the correct word even ifthe student’s pronunciation of it is out of order.

Scored Interviews:The simplest and the most frequently employed method of measuring oral proficiency is to have one or more trained raters interview each candidate separately and record their evaluations of his competence in the spoken language.

The great weakness of oral evaluations in their tendency to have rather low reliability. No two interviews are conducted exactly alike, even by the same interviewer, and even though it may be argued that some variation is wanted, or even essential, it is clear that the test reliability will be badly affected.

1. Sentence repetition. The examinee hears and then repeats a series of short sentences. For example:

a. Hannah always likes good food. Vowel contrast in "good": "food“

b. It'll be done through six weeks. Vowel contrast in "six": "weeks"

c. They've gone farther south. Voiced-voiceless fricatives in "farther”: “south”

Testing Types:

2. Reading Passage:

In English and other languages, the most precise technique “for testing pronunciation of the sound segments of a language is to have the student read out aloud the material you prepare for the test.” The student is given several minutes to read a passage silently, after which he is instructed to read it aloud at normal speed and with appropriate expression, for example:

(Examiner's copy of the test Points to be rated)While Mr. Hassan watched T.V, Primary stress

his wife finished packing his clothes Voiced final consonant(s) for the trip. The suitcase was already quite full, and she was having Vowel quality

a great deal of difficulty finding Primary stress

room for the shirts, socks and handkerchiefs. Series intonation

3. Sentence conversation:

The student is instructed to convert or transform sentences into specific ways (from positive to negative, from statement to question, from present tense to past, etc.)

4. Sentence construction.

The voice on the tape asks the student to compose sentences appropriate to specific situations.

5. Response to pictorial stimuli:

The examinee is given time to study each of a series of pictures and then briefly describes what is going onin each scene.

Paper-and-Pencil Tests of Pronunciation:

• Rhyme words: The student is first presented with a test word which he is instructed to read to himself, after which he is to select the one word from among several alternatives which rhymes with the test word. For example:

1- Should rhymes with a. goodb. moodc. code

2- Plays rhymes with a. faceb. raisec. dress

• Word stress: The examinee is to indicate which syllable in each test word receives the heaviest stress. For example:

» 1- contrastive 1 2 3 » 2- dependence 1 2 3 » 3- concerning 1 2 3

• Phrase stress:

The student is to decide which one of several numbered syllables in each utterance would receive the heaviest stress. For example:

1- We saw the thief ran away, but where did he go? 1 2 3 4 5 2- We have seen the parrot, but it has flew away. 1 2 3 4 5

1- The validity of paper-and-pencil objective techniques remains largely unverified, such techniques should be used with caution, and never as the only measure of oral proficiency.

2- The technique of highly structured speech samples shows much promise, but such testing is still in the experimental stage and requires very great test-writing skill and experience.

3- The scored interview is still probably the best technique for use in relatively informal, small-scale testing situations, and ways can be shown for substantially improving the effectiveness of this testing device.

4- The emphasis on the use of minimal pairs of words is to distinguish and recognize the differences among phonemes.

Some conclusions about the testing types:

Bearing the above factors in mind, teachers should follow some principles of effective pronunciation teaching. In particular:

1. They should learn to describe pronunciation and show how foreign language sounds are physically articulated (Phonetic or phonemic symbols can come in handy).

2. They should record their learners' speech and have them listen to recordings of themselves.

3. They should be aware of their own pronunciation. (A teacher's accent may be different from the Received Pronunciation, which students may think to be correct).

4. They should create a non-threatening, confidence-raising atmosphere.5. They should teach pronunciation a little at a time (presenting segmental first, then supra-segmental).6. They should set realistic goals.

Take into account: