Kozulin & Garb (2002)

Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension

ALEX KOZULINa and ERICA GARBb»TheInternational Center for the Enhancement of Learning

Potential, Israel and "Hebreui University, Israel

ABSTRACT The goal of this article is to explore the feasibility of thedevelopment and implementation of the dynamic assessment proce-dure in such curriculum-based areas as English as a foreign language(EFL). Vygotsky's notion of the Zone of Proximal Development andFeuerstein's concept of Mediated Learning Experience served as atheoretical base for the construction of the assessment procedure. Theprocedure included a pre-test, mediated learning phase and a post-test.It was applied with a group of 23 academically at-risk students whofailed to pass the high schoolEnglish exam. The results of the studyindicate that dynamic procedure indeed provides information on stu-dents' learning potential over and beyond that which is available fromthe static test. This information can be used for the development ofindividual learning plans attuned to the students' special learningneeds.

Dynamic vs, static assessmentThere seems to be a certain inherent contradiction between the goals ofstudent assessment and its means. The goal is usually to evaluate thestudents' learning ability and to gain information useful for moreeffective instruction. The means, however, are often limited to measur-ing the students' current performance level. This contradiction becomesparticularly salient in the case of standardized psychometric tests thatmeasure students' cognitive performance but are then used for theprediction of their learning ability and future achievements. It is notsurprising, therefore, that the initial as well as some of the current

Please address correspondence to: Alex Kozulin, The International Center forthe Enhancement of Learning Potential, 47 Narkis Street, PO Box 7755,Jerusalem 91077, Israel. Email: [email protected]

School Psychology International Copyright© 2002 SAGEPublications (London,Thousand Oaks, CAand New Delhi),Vol.23(1): 112-127. [0143-0343 (200202)23:1; 112-127; 021733)

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Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension

criticisms of psychometric tests focus on the wisdom of using psychomet-ric tests for prediction instead of attempting a direct assessment of thestudents' learning ability (Kozulin and Falik, 1995; Lidz, 1987). Whyshould one use a questionable correlation between the intelligencemeasures and the future achievements if it is possible to assess thestudents' learning ability directly?

This question was raised as early as 1934 by a Swiss psychologist,Andre Rey. He proposed basing the evaluation of students' abilities ondirectly observable learning processes. Using as a model a non-verbalpositional learning task, Rey showed that registration of the sequence ofconsecutive trails not only provides information about the students'learning ability, but also the change in their strategy. Rey thus intro-duced two important aspects of dynamic assessment: process orientationand experimental component within the testing situation.

An even more far-reaching concept oflearning potential assessmentwas proposed by Vygotsky (1934/1986; see also Kozulin, 1998; Minick,1987). Vygotsky believed that the normal learning situation for astudent is a socially meaningful cooperative activity. New cognitivefunctions and learning abilities originate within this interpersonalinteraction and only later are internalized and transformed, becomingthe student's inner cognitive processes. Thus, under conditions ofcollaborative or assisted performance students may reveal certain emer-gent functions that have not yet been internalized. According to Vygotskythese functions belong to the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) incounter-distinction to fully developed functions that belong to the Zoneof Actual Development. While the results ofthe static testing show us thealready existent abilities of the student, the analysis ofZPD allows us toevaluate the ability of the student to learn from the interaction with ateacher or more competent peer. This learning ability may serve as abetter predictor ofthe students' educational needs than the static scores.Vygotsky suggested charting individual ZPD's by comparing the stu-dents' performance under solitary conditions with their performanceduring the assisted problem solving. He mentioned the whole range ofpossible interactive interventions to be used during ZPD assessment,such as asking leading questions, modelling, starting to solve the tasksand asking students to continue and so on, but he produced no standard-ized procedure for the ZPD assessment. Vygotsky thus introduced thefollowing parameters of dynamic assessment: interactivity, emphasis ondeveloping functions and the gain score based on comparison of theresults of aided and independent performance.

For a variety of social, political and scientific reasons the notion ofdynamic assessment received relatively little attention in the periodfrom the 1930s to the 1960s. The renewed interest appeared only in thelate 1960s on the wave ofthe critique of standard psychometric tests. The

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first fully operationalized versions of dynamic cognitive assessmentwere developed by Budoff and Friedman (1964) and Feuerstein andShalom (1968). The dynamic assessment tasks themselves were similarto those used in standard psychometric tests but the assessment proce-dure was radically changed to include a learning phase. The wholephilosophy of assessment has also been changed. For example, theFeuerstein et al. (1979) version ofdynamic assessment was based on thefollowing theoretical assumptions:

(1) The students' cognitive processes are highly modifiable. The task ofassessment is to ascertain the degree of modifiability rather thanthe manifest level of functioning;

(2) The reduced modifiability is the result of insufficient type oramount of mediated learning experience (MLE) received by astudent;

(3) Dynamic assessment, which includes a mediated learning phase,provides better insight into students' learning capacity thanunaided performance;

(4) The evaluator plays an active role by mediating cognitive strategiesduring the learning phase;

(5) The goal of dynamic assessment is to reveal the students' learningpotential and to formulate optimal educational intervention (seeKozulin and Falik, 1995).

Two aspects of Feuerstein's dynamic assessment are particularlyimportant for the present discussion. His selection of assessment taskswas based on the assumption that while students' performance on sometasks depends on more conservative functions such as prior knowledge,memory or highly automatized skills, performance on other tasks ismore flexible and modifiable, and depends more on students' cognitivestrategies. For the purpose ofdynamic assessment one should thereforeselect only the latter group of tasks, i.e. only those problems whosesolution depends on the use of cognitive strategies.

The role of the evaluator, according to Feuerstein, is to identify thestudents' problems during the pre-test and to provide the necessarymediation during the learning phase. The concept ofMLE (Feuerstein,1990) specifically addresses such issues as the evaluator's sensitivity tostudents' questions and responses, the transfer of principles beyond ahere-and-now given task and mediation of the meaning of the assess-:.I>""~"-l:i!s,ituation.Only if all these criteria are met may the situationquality as an MLE-based dynamic assessment.

s well as MLE-based assessments, a whole group of dynamic cogni-tive assessment techniques is currently available. What unites all thoseapproaches is their reliance on the test-teach-test paradigm (Campione1996; Haywood and Tzuriel, 1992). At the same time the goals of

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different dynamic assessment techniques vary considerably. Some ofthem are presented as an alternative to standard psychometric proce-dures, while others appear as complementary techniques to be used inaddition to static tests. MLE-based assessments focus on the on-goinganalysis of the students' learning needs and reject the goal of prediction,while so-called learning tests developed in Germany (see Guthke andStein, 1996) claim to have a better predictive value than static tests.There are also differences in the assessment procedure, with somedynamic tests including standardized rules oflearning intervention andothers requiring a fair amount of initiative on the part of the evaluator.There is a considerable amount of confusion regarding the psychometricproperties of dynamic assessment (Grigorenko and Sternberg, 1998).More radical defenders of dynamic assessment, like Feuerstein, claimthat the difference in goals make standard psychometric properties,such as reliability and validity, irrelevant in the case of dynamicassessment. Moderates accept the need for establishing psychometricproperties, but warn against automatic transfer of standard features tothe situation of interactive assessment that is closer to classroomlearning or individual tutoring than to static testing. One of the criti-cisms aimed at both dynamic and static cognitive tests is their poorcorrelation with students' needs in such specific areas as reading andmaths, which implies -that the existence of dynamic cognitive assess-ment does not replace a domain-specific evaluation. Such an evaluation,however, should not necessarily follow a standard content-based pathbut may include elements oflearningpotential assessment elaborated inthe dynamic cognitive tests (see Cioffi and Carney, 1983; Kletzien andBednar, 1990).

Changing perspectives in content learningDuring the last two decades the concept of students' cognition hasundergone a serious modification, as also has the concept of contentlearning (see Kozulin, 1998: Chapter 7). In the past, content learningwas perceived predominantly as a transfer ofinformation and rules fromthe teacher to students. Regular school students were presumed to becognitively ready to receive any age-appropriate information. Thus thequestion of cognitive functions was invoked only in relation to specialneeds students or when one discussed the readiness of pre-schoolchildren for regular school study. The new concept of content learninghas a much stronger link to the process of students' cognitive develop-ment (Burden and Williams, 1998). On the one hand the process ofcontent acquisition depends to a considerable extent on cognitive strat-egies available for the students; on the other hand, content learningcontributes to the development of students' general thinking skills.

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School Psychology International (2002), Vol. 23(1)For example, new approaches in science teaching present the learning

process as leading to a conceptual change (Driver et al., 1985). Students'intuitive concepts of natural phenomena undergo modification andchange under the influence of their learning experience. Thus contentlearning is conceived as a process of change in the students' thinkingabout nature. To produce such a change, it is not enough to simplypresent scientific concepts to the students. Students should be taughthow to think scientifically. At the same time, some authors (Adey, 1999)claim that if students are given proper 'thinking science' activities, theoutcomes will be positive not only in science knowledge but also in moregeneral thinking abilities.

A somewhat similar process can be observed in mathematical instruc-tion. The process of maths teaching is no longer seen as a meretransmission of operations, rules and standard algorithms for solvingstandard problems, but rather as a constructive, interactive and reflec-tive practice of developing and applying maths concepts (Nelissen,1999).

In reading instruction, researchers have been coming to similarconclusions. That reading is not a passive, but rather an active, and infact an interactive process, has been recognized for some time (Goodman,1967; Rumelhart, 1977; Smith, 1971). Current theories regard readingas an active process in which the reader constructs meaning from textcues, calling upon knowledge of language, text structure, conventions,content concepts, etc. This knowledge is organized in the reader's mindin schemas, which are activated when a good reader approaches a text(Carrel, 1984).

Activating or constructing a schema includes arriving at a coherentexplanation of the relations between elements in a discourse, and thusknowledge of text structure is a key feature. The distinction between atext and unrelated sentences is one of cohesion, (Halliday and Hasan,1976) including elements such as reference, substitution, ellipsis, con-junction and lexical cohesion. Other textural features which influencecomprehension include awareness of the arrangement of ideas in texts,i.e. the rhetorical and logical organization, vocabulary, syntax, clarity ofauthor's intentions and readers' familiarity with the content. Salientfindings from the research indicate that readers can optimize theircomprehension by becoming aware of the text structures and theresultant effect they have on learning. By detecting the organizationalpatterns of texts, students can observe how authors arrange ideas andwhich kind of structures are used to interrelate ideas.

A significant implication for curriculum development that the re-search suggests is that knowledge precedes control, and thatmetacognitionofthe above factors can therefore optimize their influence (Armbruster etal., 1983). Thus reading involves both knowledge - of strategies for

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Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehensionunderstanding texts, differing demands of various reading chores,textual structures, one's own strengths and weaknesses - and control.

Successful readers monitor their reading, plan strategies, adjusteffort appropriately and evaluate the success oftheir on-going efforts tounderstand. The process is essentially inferential, in other words,readers must be able to 'reason' about text material during reading.Research indicates that direct instruction in techniques that involvestudents in actively reasoning about texts improves comprehension(Baker, 1983; Brown et al., 1981; Garner and Kraus, 1982; Markman andGorin, 1981; Myers and Paris, 1978; Paris et al., 1983).

In the last few years, research has therefore centred on addingmetacognitive elements to curriculum development, since researchersconsistently posit that metacognition plays an important - indeed vital- role in reading (Armbruster, 1983; Baker and Brown, 1984a,b; Brownet aI., 1981; 1983; 1986; Baker et al., 1986; Flavell and Wellman, 1977).

Research on comprehension strategies took on greater importance inthe 1980s. In a landmark study, Palinscar and Brown (1984) suggestedthat strategy instruction has the potential ofbeing an effective approachto improving comprehension in L1 readers. Garner (1987) indicates thatself-awareness and control oflearning to read for comprehension can betaught through the acquisition of cognitive strategies and suggestscertain guidelines for those attempting classroom implementation of thestrategy instruction success described in the literature:

(a) Teachers must devote time to the processes involved in reading andlearning. Brown (1981) is only one of many analysts to have notedthat product rather than process is stressed in most traditionalclassrooms. In order to stress processes, the covert cognitive andmetacognitive processes must first be rendered into overt form, i.e.suitable materials must be devised;

(b) Teachers must do task analyses of strategies to be taught. Garnersuggests that strategic problem-solving activities be examined andstrategies broken down into global steps;

(c) Teachers must demonstrate a variety of situations in which learn-ers might profitably use the strategies taught and transfer to thesesituations must be explicitly taught.

Clay (1993) was another pioneer of the cognitive approach. Hermethod of 'reading recovery' focuses on identifying and teaching stu-dents the effective strategies of reading. These strategies includeinferencing, identifying important information, monitoring one's ownperformance, summarizing and question-generating.

One piece of research which highlights the importance of strategytraining is that of Dole et al. (1996). The group which received strategy

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training outperformed other groups when asked to read selections ontheir own, without the teachers' support, pointing to the transfer valueof teaching students to become independent learners. This study, likeearlier ones, (Palinscar and Brown, 1984; Wong, 1985) shows that lowerachievers benefit particularly from learning specific strategies. In addi-tion, the research indicated that strategies could compensate for lack ofbackground knowledge. Although the experimental group was not givenadvance background knowledge provided to other groups, this did notplace them at a serious disadvantage.

"

Cognitive approach to EFL teaching and learningSimilar research in English as a Foreign Language learning has repli-cated the major findings ofLl reading research. Clarke and Silberstein(1977) concluded that second language (L2) learners needed to be taughtstrategies cognitively in order to read more efficiently, strategies such asguessing from context, defming expectations, making inferences fromthe text, skimming ahead to fill in the contexts, etc. Coady (1979)reinterpreted Goodman's model (1967) into a model more specificallysuited to L2 learners and identified three components of the readingprocess: process strategies, background knowledge and conceptual abili-ties. The goal should be to provide students with a range of effectiveapproaches to texts. Carrel (1984; 1988; 1989) demonstrated that train-ing L2 students in strategies for recognizing the organizational struc-ture of texts resulted in improved comprehension and pointed out someinteresting specific differences between L1 and L2learners: for example,for L2 students, awareness of the more specific logical patterns oforganization such as cause-effect, compare and contrast and problem-solution improve comprehension, indicating that strategy awarenessmight be even more important for L2learners. The implications for EFLcurriculum development are that students need to develop strategieswhich can be generalized to all texts. An example of such a curriculumis one developed by Garb and Kozulin (1998) for adult learners at pre-academic centres in Israel. Each unit focuses on a general problem-solving strategy, includes more specific language learning strategies,and provides EFL content material with which to practice, integrate andgain insight into both the general and specific strategies.

It is fairly obvious that if the goals and methods ofEFL instruction areoriented toward a cognitive model, the evaluation of EFL learningshould be appropriately redesigned. It would make no sense to check thestudents' rote memory of words or rules, if the instruction was aimed atdeveloping in them effective strategies for text comprehension thatwould not be completely handicapped by insufficient vocabulary or aforgotten rule. A dynamic assessment ofEFL text comprehension should

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Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehensiontherefore assess the student's ability to learn, activate and use effectivestrategies for text comprehension.

Methodology of dynamic EFL assessmentA dynamic EFL assessment was designed and tested in a population ofyoung adults (18-25) at a number of pre-academic centres in Israel (Garband Kozulin, 1999), using the test-teach-test paradigm described above.The students would first be given a static test. The teacher would thenreview the test with the students, mediating for them the strategiesrequired in each item, building together with the students processmodels for each item, and indicating how strategies can be transferredfrom one task to another. A re-test would indicate how individualstudents benefited or did not benefit from the mediation. This re-testwould be given soon after the mediation, to avoid interference fromclassroom learning.

Stage 1. The pre-test. The pre-test was adapted from a standard testused for EFL placement purposes in pre-academic centres at collegesand universities in Israel. The original test consisted of nine sections,three of which dealt with vocabulary recognition or production. Theseitems were eliminated, since success in these items depended purely onprior knowledge. The test now reflected more accurately the nature ofreal text-comprehension tasks demanded for EFL academic reading, i.e.tasks requiring text comprehension amenable to the use of cognitivestrategies. The six remaining items were analysed in order to determine(a) what basic information was needed and (b) what strategies should beused for successful completion.

Stage 2. The mediation process. Based on the above analysis, verydetailed guidelines were designed to enable teachers to mediate each ofthe items in an interactive way and to ensure that mediation wasconsisten t from teacher to teacher. The students' own corrected pre-testswere used for mediation, and collected again after the mediation. Themediation was divided into two stages: Part 1 (items A and B of theassessment), involve manipulation of grammatical, lexical and sentencestructure conventions. An 'information page' was constructed for stu-dents to take home and revise, providing the basic lexical and grammati-cal information they would need: question words, the auxiliary verbs 'tobe' and 'to do', both in the negative and positive and the Subject-Verb-Complement (SVC) structure of normative sentences and questionforms. Part 2 includes four texts, increasing in length and complexity,with questions designed to test comprehension. The strategies mediatedin stage 2 focus on using text structure, cohesion devices and backgroundknowledge to elicit meaning from texts and questions. Each mediationstage requires approximately 50 minutes.

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Stage 3. Re-test. A second test was designed, where each itemmatched that of the pre-test with regard to information, strategies,length and level of difficulty. Both tests were piloted without mediationat one of the pre-academic centres. Student scores on all items werealmost identical, indicating that the second test was equivalent to thefirst.

ProcedureThe entire pre-test was given to the students. The maximum timeallowed was 90 minutes. Dictionaries were not allowed, so that studentswould need to rely for word meaning on strategies such as predictionand hypothesis. Mediation and re-testing were done in two stages, sincethe pilot experiment indicated that this population of students wasunable to absorb mediation ofthe entire test at one sitting. Part 1 wasmediated and re-tested a few days later. Part 2 was then mediated, andre-tested a few days later. (Appendix A will illustrate the procedure bygiving one example of the pre-test and the mediation instructions toteachers).

SampleWe report here results obtained in one ofthe pre-academic centres in therural area ofthe country. Assessment was conducted with a group of 23students, 4 males and 19 females, aged 20-23 years. Three of thestudents were relatively new immigrants for whom English was theirthird language. All students were considered the weaker group ofacademically at-risk students, having failed to obtain a matriculationcertificate. In addition to studying EFL, these students were concomi-tantly taking up to a total of seven other subjects.

ResultsThe comparison of pre- and post-test performance of the students can beanalysed in a number of ways. First of all one can see that on averagestudents' scores improved by more than one standard deviation (seeTable 1). The effect size is 1.2 (Effect size = Gain score/SD ofthe post-test). This result indicates that many of the students indeed benefitedfrom mediation and were able to apply the acquired strategies to the newtext. Secondly, it became clear that while the pre- and post-rest scoresare highly correlated (r = 0.8), the gain scores are negatively correlatedwith the pre-test scores. This means that the pre-test scores reflect thestudents' actual performance level but not their learning potential.

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Table 1 Mean scores and standard deviations in the pre- and post-test of EFL text comprehension. Max score = 34; N = 23

Mean SD

Pre-Post-

17.022.6

6.34.5

A number of students with identical pre-test scores performed verydifferently at the post-test. For example, students T and H both had29 percent correct answers at the pre-test, but after mediation T got59 percent, while H only 38 percent. This is true also of initially higherachieving students. For example, L and A both received 62 percent at thepre-test, but at the post-test A improved his result to 82 percent, whileL remained with 65 percent. This finding confirms the practical value ofthe EFL dynamic assessment procedure because it provides in-depthinformation about the different learning needs of the students who havethe same standard performance scores.

In order to operationalize the students' learning potential the follow-ing scoring method was developed. In our opinion, the learning potentialscore (LP8) has to reflect both gain made by the student from pre- to post-test and an absolute achievement score at the post-test. Thus

LP8(8 post - 8 pre)

MaxSSpost

+ = (2 S post - 8 pre)lMax SMaxS

where 8 pre and S post are pre- and post-test scores, and Max 8 is amaximum obtainable score. The above formula provides a theoreticalbasis for distinguishing between high learning potential and low learn-ing potential students. For example, a student who at a pre-test had alow score = 50, but made a significant progress and reached the maxi-mum score of 100 at the post-test would have a very high LPS = 1.5;whereas a student who at a pre-test had a low score = 50 and made noprogress receiving at the post-test the same score = 50, would have a verylow LP8 = 0.5. All other cases characterized by different combinations ofgain scores and absolute post- test score can be plotted against theseextremes.

The LP8 ofthe students from our sample ranged from 0.47 to 1.21. Onecan distinguish three sub-groups: a high learning potential sub-groupwith LPS>1.0, a low learning potential sub-group with LPS<O.71 and alarge sub-group with LPS ranging from 0.79 to 0.88 (see Figure 1). It isimportant to emphasize that all three groups include some students whoperformed at the pre-test at the same level, which means that the

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Learning Potential Score1.41.2

1(f)

~ 0.8oo 0.6en 0.4

0.2o

Students

Figure 1 Distribution of learning potential scores in a group ofstudents.

learning potential adds important information regarding the students'learning ability that is unobtainable by means of standard examination.

DiscussionThe goal of this article was to explore the feasibility ofthe developmentand implementation of the dynamic EFL assessment procedure in thepre-academic classroom. The results indicate that the procedure is bothfeasible and effective in obtaining information on students' learningpotential. It was confirmed that students with similar performancelevels demonstrated different, and in some cases dramatically differentabilities to learn and use new text comprehension strategies. Because ofthis we can affirm that the paradigm ofdynamic assessment is useful notonly in the field of cognitive performance but also in such curriculardomains as EFL learning.

At the same time one should be aware of those characteristic featuresofthe dynamic assessment procedure that impose certain limitations onthe generalizability ofthe results. Any dynamic assessment that includesan element of intervention depends on the quality of mediation providedby the assessor. In this respect dynamic assessment is closer to asituation of instruction rather than examination. Results obtained in thepresent study thus reflect not only the students' learning potential butalso the quality of mediation provided during the assessment. One mayalways suspect that another assessor with a different mediational stylemight reveal a somewhat different pattern of learning abilities in thesame group of students. Thus one of the possible directions for the future

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research is a study of reliability of learning potential scores obtainedduring assessment sessions conducted by different mediators.

The second limitation inherent in any curriculum-based assessmentis its dependence on students' content knowledge. There is no such thingas a content-free language task which means that students with bettervocabulary and better knowledge of grammatical rules would alwayshave a certain advantage. Though our selection of assessment materialswas guided by the ideal of strategies-based text comprehension, it wasimpossible to eliminate the element of content knowledge as such. Inother words, students who have a very poor knowledge base cannotexpect to reach a high achievement level even if their use of strategies isquite good.

The instructional value of the dynamic EFL assessment lies in the factthat its results can be used for the development of individual learningplans for students with different learning needs. For example, work withstudents who demonstrated an average pre-test performance but insuf-ficient learning potential should focus on providing them with learningand information-processing strategies, i.e. teaching them 'how to learn'.Students with an average pre-test performance and high learningpotential should be given more challenging material and more opportun-ity for independent study. Students with low pre-test performance andlow learning potential need an intensive investment into their generallearning and problem-solving skills that should be based on very simpleEFL material. Only after these students acquire the basic learning skillsshould they be challenged by the standard EFL tasks.

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Appendix

Pre-testText:'David and I were tourists in Europe last summer. We ate cheese inDenmark and olives in Italy. The cheese and olives were very good. Wedrank wine in France and tea in England. The tea from England and thewine from France were excellent.'

Questions:(1) The people in the story

(a) live in Europe;(b) came to Europe on a visit;(c) have never been to Europe;(d) visit Europe every summer.

(2) How many places in Europe did they visit? What were they?

(3) They the English tea.(a) didn't drink;(b) ate;(c) didn't like;(d) liked.

Mediation instructions to teachersMediation of text analysis according to agency, location and timereference.

Mediation of the strategy of comparing to alternatives and the strategyof elimination.

Mediation of inferential reasoning.

Read the text. Try to identify who are the characters, where were theyand uiheri and what did they do.

Who:Where:When:What:

David and IEurope, Denmark, Italy, France, EngandLast summerWere tourists, ate cheese, ate olives, drank wine, drank tea.

Question 1.Consider all alternatives one by one. First eliminate improbable [a) and[c), then compare (hI and [d]. What is the difference between them? Onevisit vs. visit every summer. Check the when - 'last summer'. There is noinformation about visits every summer, therefore (h] is a correct answer.

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Kozulin & Garb: Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text ComprehensionQuestion 2.The question is about 'places in Europe'. Check where because it containsinformation about the places, e.g. Denmark, Italy, France, England.Why Europe should not be included? Because the question is aboutplaces in Europe.

Question 3.The question is related to English tea. Check all sentences whichmention English tea: 'We drank ... tea in England' and 'The tea fromEngland ... was excellent'. Check the alternatives [a] to [d], eliminateimpossible [a] and lbl, select more probable ldl, because if 'the tea wasexcellent', most probably the tourists 'liked it'.

© Garb and Kozulin 1999

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Kozulin & Garb (2002)