Testing Grammar

                                                     TESTING GRAMMAR

INTRODUCTION

A.Background

Grammar tests are designed to measure student proficiency in matters ranging from inflections (bottle-bottles, bake-baked) to syntax.Syntax involves the relationship of words in a sentence, including matters such as word order, use of negative, question forms, and connectives.   Control of grammatical structures was seen as the very core of language ability and it would be unthinkable not to test it. There has been a shift towards the view that since it is language skills that are usually of interest, and then it is these which should be tested directly, not the abilities that seem to underlie it.  Whether or not grammar has an important place in an institution’s teaching, it has to be accepted that grammatical ability, or rather the lack of it, sets limits to what can be achieved in the way of skills performance.  It would be very useful to have diagnostic tests of grammar which could tell us – for individual learners and groups – what gaps exist in their grammatical repertoire.  It would be important for the test to be linked in some way or other to learning materials.   There is a reason to believe that we may be on the point of having computer based test of grammar that will be able to provide such information.

 

B. The Reasons Why Teacher Candidates And Readers Need to Understand Testing Grammer

Help students view their study progress. Yet, designing an innovative and practical test is considered a laborious work. It requires a number of procedures prior to administering the actual test, such as careful test design, trial, evaluation and revision. To illustrate the procedures, this paper presents a proto test for grammar and discusses its process which includes the test design, the trial, the discussion of the results, and the revisions. Designing such grammar test is believed to contribute a significant role in language teaching, especially for the intended students in the department of primary school teacher education in Gorontalo. Tomlinson (2005) argues that a useful grammar test should provide an opportunity for students to reflect on the knowledge they have learnt and to recognise whether or not they are able to use the knowledge for communicative purposes. Therefore, this test is expected to enable the intended students to reflect on their learning progress and to predict how they can deal with teaching English in primary schools in the future. In sum, this progress test measures a range of grammatical features, such as S-V agreement, prepositions and interrogatives. It consists of four parts, ranging from selected response tasks to extended-production tasks. Part one and three test the students' grammatical knowledge through discourse activity completion and errors identification, whereas part two and four require the students to demonstrate their grammatical ability through writing. The selection of these four parts or tasks is due to the fact that the students may teach English to primary school students in the future. Thus, having good understanding on grammatical knowledge and ability is essential in order to meet their prospective primary school students' needs.

There was a time when controlling of grammatical structures was seen as the very core of language ability and it was unthinkable not to test it. and find the perfect words to express From grammar and spelling to style and tone, Grammarly helps you eliminate errors yourself. Inasmuch as it can generally be assumed that the native speaker of the language has mastered a grammatical system largely or wholly acceptable for informal discourse,1 “grammar” tests at least on the high school and college levels have usually concentrated on matters of style and

diction appropriate for rather formal written English. On the other hand, structure tests for foreign students will have as their purpose the testing of control of the basic grammatical patterns of the spoken language. Such tests would constitute no challenge for native speakers of standard English, who, except for carelessness, would be expected to make perfect scores. Only for the most advanced foreign learners are tests of formal style and diction at all meaningful, and

then they are better treated as tests of writing ability and kept quite separate from the tests of structure. Now whether or not grammar has an important place in an institution’s teaching, it has to be accepted that grammatical ability, or rather the lack of it, sets limits to what can be achieved in the way of skills performance.

The successful writing of academic assignments, for example, must depend to some extent on the command of elementary grammatical structures. The diagnostic tests of grammar are very useful for the individual and the group.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                               

 

 

 

                                       

 

      Testing GrammarDISCUSSION

A.Definition Of Testing Grammer

The testing of grammar is one of the mainstays of language testing. While such tests test the ability to either recognize or produce correct grammar and usage, they do not test the ability to use the language to express meaning. However, it can be argued that a basic knowledge of grammar underlies the ability to use language to express meaning, and so grammar tests do have an important part to play in language programs.  For achievement tests where teaching objectives or the syllabus list the grammatical structures to be taught, specification of content should be quite straightforward.Specifications for a placement test will normally include all of the structures identified in this way, as well as, perhaps, those structures of command of which is taken for granted in even the lowest classes. For proficiency and diagnostic tests, the van Ek and Trim publications referred to in the Further reading section, which are based on a notional-functional approach, are especially useful, as are grammars like the Cobuild English Usage.

B.Principle Of Testing Grammer

principles and parameters (Generative Linguistics), constraints Testing Grammar; Optimality Theory; Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar), texts (Systemic Functional Linguistics), constructions (Cognitive Linguistics; Construction Grammar), patterned sequences (Corpus Linguistics; Pattern Grammar), and so forth. The lesson in all this is that it is important to be clear about what is meant when one is making claims about grammar. Thus, following this introduction, a definition of a pedagogical grammar  will be proposed, one that is broad enough to draw on many of these linguistic theories for their insights, yet sufficiently focused to fulfill its teaching and testing functions. Then, too, as with any subject, an understanding of grammar teaching and assessment is better served by knowing how the subject is learned or acquired. Indeed, it was this awareness that drew many language teachers to investigate the learning of grammar, which in turn led to the establishment of SLA as a separate area of inquiry in the early 1970s. Much work has been done since then, and many SLA researchers still take the explanandum to be a mental grammar  Obviously, though, a comprehensive review.

 

 

C.Types and Example Of  testing Grammer

Multiple Choice

 Tests Probably t e most common way of testing grammatical knowledge is the multiple choice test. These tests have the advantage of being easy to grade and being able to cover a lot of grammatical points quickly. The most common type of multiple choice grammatical item is one in which the test maker gives the testee a sentence with a blank and four or five choices of a word or phrase which completes the sentence correctly. For example, Because my mother was sick, I a) had b) have c) has d) hadn't to go home last week. To give slightly more context, this type of question sometimes makes use of a short dialogue, with one person saying something and the other person responding. A way of testing short mswers and responses is to give the testees and utterance, and have them decide which of four or five utterances is an appropriate response. This can be either a test of comprehension or a test of grammar.

 For example:

 "I think that tuition is much too high here."

a) I do so.

 b) Do I so.

c) I so do.

 d) So do I.

 Another way to test grammatical knowledge using multiple choice items is to give testees a sentence and ask them to choose which of four or five alternatives has the same meaning.

"The school should have expelled him."

 a) The school didn't expel him, which was wrong.

b) The school expelled him, because it was necessary.

 c) The school might have expelled him, if it had known.

d) The school will probably expel him in the near future. Again this is a test of reading comprehension as well as grammar, but in order to understand the meaning of the sentence, the reader does have to understand the grammar. The test maker must fmd a balance between giving enough context and giving too much. One way to give more context and make the language more natural is to give the items in the form of a short reading passage rather than individual sentences. This gives the testees more context and, if the passage is chosen carefully, is also much more interesting than reading individual, uncontextualized sentences. However, it may be more difficult to test a range of grammatical points, since the grammatical points are restricted by the content of the passage. A variation on this idea is to use a piece of prose written by a nonnative English speaker. This is particularly useful for making a grammar test for testees who are all of the same language group, since the errors made by the writer can be used as distracters.

Error Correction

 Error correction items are also useful for testing grammar. An error correction item is one in which the testee is given a sentence with an error. Four words or phrases in the sentence marked with letters, and the testee needs to decide which of the words or phrases has the error.

 For example:

Most of students   believe that they should be getting better grades  than they are.

             A                        B                                            C                                                 D

The teacher may also mix in some sentences that have no errors, and students are required to indicate that there is no error. In addition, the students might be required to correct the error. Errors from students' actual writing are a good source of ideas for this type of exercise.

 Items to Test Knowledge of Word/Sentence Order

 Other types of items can be used to test testees' knowledge of word order. The traditional way is to present the testee with four alternative word orders.

For example:

 I wonder how she knows

 a) how it costs much.

 b) how much it costs.

 c) it costs how much.

d) it how much costs.

 Another possibility is to give testees the four words and ask them to put the words in order.

For example, I wonder how she knows

 A. how

B. it

 C. much

 D. costs / / / / /

This can also be done in a way that actually requires the writer to do some writing.

For example, I wonder how she knows how……………….. / it /much / costs

 Understanding of appropriate sentence order can also be tested in a similar way by giving testees several sentences and asking them to put them in order. This type of test tests knowledge of references, cohesive devices, etc.

Completion Items

 Completion items are items in which the testees are asked to fill in blanks in sentences.

For example, Give the book to………… woman in the blue dress

 For the purpose of a grammar test, the words which fit in the blanks should be function words, such as articles and prepositions. (Completion items intended to test reading ability or vocabulary knowledge, in contrast, use content words.) The advantage of completion items is that they test production, not just recognition. The disadvantage is that they need to be marked by hand and there will be some cases where the marker needs to make judgements about whether a response is correct. It is not always easy to write items for with there is only one possible answer. Using a piece of continuous prose rather than disconnected sentences is one way of cutting down on possible different interpretations of what goes into a particular blank, but it is probably impossible to entirely eliminate the possibility of different answers.

 Also, it is possible to require a phrase instead of a word in each blank. However, while this method presents a more realistic situation, it does become more difficult to mark. While it is probably not realistic for largescale testing situations, it is something that is useful for classroom teachers who want to help their students develop an ability to produce appropriate grammatical forms in context.

Transformation Items

Another type of grammar item makes use of transformations. In this type of item, testees are given a sentence and the first few words of another sentence to change the original sentence without changing the meaning.

 For example,

 1. Jim hasn't been home in a long time. It's been a long time……………….

 2. I don't need to go to the grocery store this week. It isn't…………………

 3. It is difficult to study when it is so noisy. Studying…………………

There are variations on these this type of item in which the word which starts the transformed sentence is underlined, or the testee is given one word to use in the new sentence.

 For example,

I don't need to go to the grocery store this week. (necessary) Again, this type of test is difficult to grade because the teacher has to be aware of the variety of possible answers. Another problem is that it does not in any way test the testees' knowledge of when each of the possible transformations would be most appropriate. For example, the testee might be perfectly able to transform an active sentence to a passive sentence but not know when to use passive rather than active. However, it is useful still sometimes a useful test of grammatical knowledge.

Word Changing Items

Another type of item is one in which the testees are given a sentence and a word which they need to fit into the sentence by changing the form of the word.

 For example,

 1. I have never……. to Australia. (be)

 2. I will be with you …….. (moment)

This type of grammar test item tests students' knowledge of different word forms and how they are used in sentences.

 Sentence Combining

 Exercises Sentence combining exercises can play a part in testing grammar as well as its more traditional use as part of composition testing and training.

 For example,

 testees might be instructed to combine the following sentences using a relative pronoun.

I met a man.

The man went to the same high school I did.

 (I met a man who went to the same high school I did.)

D. Procdedures Of Testing Grammer

•      Use prose passages like a paragraph, an essay, a story

•      Context is important to fill in the gaps loze Procedure

 

Cloze tests are prose passages, usually a paragraph or more in length, from which words have been deleted.  The students rely on the context in order to supply the missing words. It is easy to prepare and easy to score. The cloze is simply a story or essay from which a number of words have been deleted. In this test, the overall meaning and surrounding grammar help to replace the missing parts.

Sentence-completion vocabulary and grammar items are similar in a way to cloze tests. Cloze passages simply have much larger contexts.

 

E.Scoring Of Testing Grammer

Gap filling and multiple choice items are easy to score. The important thing when scoring other types of item is to be clear about what each item is testing, and to reward points for that only.

There should be one element, such as subject-pronoun-verb inversion, and all available points should be awarded for that. If two elements are being tested in an item, then points should be assigned to each of them. In this case both elements have to be correct for any points to be rewarded. 

 

The important thing when scoring other types of item is to be clear about what each item is resting, and to award points for that only.

  There may be just one element and all available points should be awarded for that; nothing should be deducted for non-grammatical errors, or for errors in elements of grammar which are not being tested by the item.   

 Ex. A candidate missed a third person –s when the item is testing relative pronouns and he misspelled opened to “-opend” (the candidate should not be penalized)

  If two elements are being tested in an item, then points may be assigned to each of them.

2 ways to score the cloze tests

1-Give credit only to the exact word for the gap

2-Give full credit for equivalent words as well = BE CAREFUL natives can decide the equivalent not non-natives = if there is no native around, please use the exact word choice to score

•      Problems and solutions

•      1- misspelling???

No clear agreement on how to take off the half a point or give no grade

-any kind of spelling mistake

•      - Problems and solutions

•      2- bad handwriting???

•      - Agreement is on no recognizable word no score

•      3-using two or more words in a gap???

•      Even though both perfectly fit for the gap, NO CREDIT should be given because instructions tell them only one word is acceptable for each gap

•      BUT I BELIEVE that teachers should use their discretion (takdir /sağduyu) to assess.