Grace Cid Bustos Verónica Sáez Zambrano Diego Ulloa Iglesias

Assessing Grammar summary: Chapter One.

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Syntactocentric perspective

It is predominantly concerned with the structure of clauses and sentences. This view defines “grammar” as a systematic way of accounting for and predicting an “ideal” speaker’s or hearer’s knowledge of the language.

Communicative perspective

It focuses more on the overall message being communicated and the interpretations that this message might invoke. “Grammar” is treated as one of the many resources for accomplishing something with language.

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Traditional grammar

It is based on a set of prescriptive rules along with the exceptions. It is criticized for its inability to provide descriptions of the language that could adequately incorporate the exceptions into the framework and for its lack of generalizability to other languages.

Structural grammar

It describes the structure of the language in terms of both its morphology and its syntax, in which each word in a given sentence is categorized according to its use and the “patterns” or “structures” are said to constitute a unique system for that language.

Transformational-generative grammar

It provides a “universal” description of language behavior revealing the internal linguistic system for which all humans are predisposed. Underlying properties of any individual language system can be uncovered by means of a detailed sentence-level analysis. This Universal Grammar (UG) has been criticized for failing to account for meaning or language use in social contexts.

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The most common practice of compiling linguistic corpora, or large and principled collections of natural, authentic spoken and written texts. It shows how often and where a linguistic form occurs in spoken or written text.

It provides information on patters of variation in language use, language change, and varieties of language. It also provides information on the different semantic functions of lexical items, distributional and frequency information on the lexico-grammatical features of the language.

It challenges languages teachers to rethink how they view the content of a language curriculum and the manner in which this curriculum is presented to students.

Katz and Fodor (1963) found that in addition to encoding semantic features and restrictions, a word also contains a number of syntactic features including the part of speech (noun, verb, adjective), countability (singular, plural), gender (masculine, feminine), and it can mark prepositional co-occurrence restrictions such as when the word think is followed by a preposition (about, of, over) or is followed by a that-clause. Katz and Fodor called this ‘the grammatical dimension of lexis’.

Grace Cid Bustos Verónica Sáez Zambrano Diego Ulloa Iglesias

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Systemic-functional grammar

Context and meaning take precedence over linguistic form. It typically describes features of grammatical form that are used to express meaning beyond a single, context-free utterance. Rather, grammatical form is seen as having a symbiotic relationship with meaning and pragmatic use, where each influences and shapes the other within and across utterances.

Both have had a considerable impact on L2 syllabus design, teaching and testing, and are credited for shifting the emphasis of language classrooms from a formal grammatical focus to a communication-based one. Speech act theory

Effective communication is not simply perceived as a function of linguistic accuracy or acceptable grammar to convey literal and intended meaning. Communication must be appropriate for the context, i.e. speakers must have both ‘linguistic competence’ and ‘communicative competence’.

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It represents an eclectic, but principled description of the target-language forms, created for the express purpose of helping teachers understand the linguistic resources of communication.

These grammars provide information about how language is organized and offer relatively accessible ways of describing complex, linguistic phenomena for pedagogical purposes.

The more L2 teachers understand how the grammatical system works, the better they will be able to tailor this information to their specific instructional contexts.

Besides formal pedagogical grammars (and, of course, SLA theory), language teachers would be advised to consult language textbooks when put to the task of specifying grammatical content for instruction or assessment.

These books not only provide descriptions, albeit less comprehensive, of the target grammar, but they also inform teachers of the scope with which a grammar point might be treated at a particular proficiency level or the sequence with which grammar points might be introduced.

Grace Cid Bustos Verónica Sáez Zambrano Diego Ulloa Iglesias

Assessing Grammar summary: Chapter Nine.

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Defining grammatical ability

At the moment of assessing grammatical form and meaning in communicative language testing, it is relevant to provide teachers and learners with a more complete assessment, taking into account the grammatical ability of the test takers than just providing information about the form or the meaning.

Theoretical challenges about the definition of

grammatical knowledge

It is concerned to language educators who need to make comprehensible distinctions between the form and meaning components of grammatical knowledge in terms of the test purpose in order to integrate these distinctions in construct definition.

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Scoring grammatical ability

It is related to scoring form, meaning and grammar assessments and also how language teachers need to adapt their scoring procedures to reflect the two dimensions of grammatical knowledge. It requires the use of measurement models to contain dichotomous and partial- credit data in analyzing test scores. In scoring extended-production tasks descriptors, rubrics must be adapted to grade performance in form and meaning more noticeably.

Advantages and disadvantages

“The advantage of using complex performance tasks that are highly authentic is the generalizability of the inferences these tasks allow us to make about grammatical ability”.(p.259) The disadvantages are related to the lack of accuracy with which teachers are able to infer what students or test takers know about grammar, taking into other constructs that could be intended or no measured in such tasks by raters.

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Assessing meanings

It is concerned about the meaning and how meaning in a model of communicative language ability can be defined and assessed.

The assessment of

meaning in terms of grammatical meaning and

pragmatic meaning

The primary goal in grammar assessment is to notice if students are able to use forms to acquire their basic point across correctly and significantly. If meaning is construct-relevant, as a result communicative meaningfulness should be scored.

Pragmatic meaning involves an amount of implied meanings that originate from context relating to the interpersonal relationship of the interlocutors.

The distinctions between grammatical meaning and pragmatic meanings are observable when L2 students fail at the moment of understanding how meanings could be extended or intentionally confusing.

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Reconsidering grammar-test tasks

It is related to the

design of test tasks that are able to

measure grammatical ability and provide

authentic and engage measures of grammatical

performance.

To design tasks that are authentic and engaging measures of performance, it is necessary to consider:

The assessment purpose and the construct that is going to be measure.

To consider the kinds of grammatical performance required in order to provide evidence in support of the inferences.

After the inferences are specified, it is required to support these claims to design test tasks to measure what students know about grammar or how they are able to use grammatical resources to accomplish a wide range of activities in the target language.

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Assessing the development of

grammatical ability

“The challenge for language testers is to

design, score and interpret grammar assessments with a

consideration for developmental

proficiency” (Pupura, 2005; p. 273)

Ellis (2001) states that grammar scores should be calculated to provide a measure of grammatical accuracy and the underlying acquisitional development of L2 students.

With limited or extended production tasks. Teachers can give learners credit for and feedback by judging performance on these tasks by means of analytic rating scales.

Rating scales need to be based on construct and task based methods in which the different level of grammatical abilities can be described completely.

Grace Cid Bustos Verónica Sáez Zambrano Diego Ulloa Iglesias

Learning-oriented assessment of grammatical ability: Chapter Eight.

What is learning-oriented assessment of grammar?

In the context of learning grammar learning-oriented assessment of grammar, is believed among the

educational assessment experts, that student learning would improve if assessment, curriculum and

instruction were more connected.

In reaction to conventional test, many experts have been working in new assessments techniques that

better elicit students’ outcome and that better connect to classroom goals, curricula and instruction. In this

process we find alternative, authentic and performance assessment, all of them seems to be the same, but

they have slightly differences. According to Purpura (2004) Alternative assessment encourage assessments

in which students are asked to perform or produce meaningful tasks that need both higher level thinking

and real world implication. Authentic assessment requires knowledge and skills where can be observed

some real life or authentic tasks, to perform these tasks students need some complex and extended

production, self-assessment is an important component of these tasks. Performance assessment refers to

the evaluation of outcome, which is derived from the observation of more complex tasks that implicates real

life situation. Self-assessment is required by making explicit scoring in a rubric.

The objective of learning-oriented assessment of grammar is to provide information about the grammar

students know, understand or are able to use in different contexts, and the repercussion that this

information might have for grammar processing; moreover, teachers can be provided with information

about what students feel about learning grammar and about themselves as learners. In terms of method,

learning-oriented assessment of grammar believe that assessment must be open to all task types, and this

include the use of selected-response, limited-production and complex production tasks that may not involve

real-life implication. Finally, learning-oriented assessment is designed to be an integral part of instruction, it

can occur at formal or informal situation, at any stage of the learning process. The data can be collected at

one point in time or over a period of time.

Implementing learning-oriented assessment of grammar. Considerations from grammar testing theory.

For implementing learning-oriented assessment of grammar some implications must be consider as design

and operationalization, and also test developers need to plan for and specify how assessment will be used to

promote further leaning. .

Implications for test design: First consideration: in the design stage of a test construction, classrooms teacher need to specify whom we are doing the assignment for, why assessment information is needed and what kind of information (essential information to specify assessment purpose). Second consideration: construct definition. Learning-oriented assessment aims to measure simple or complex constructs depending on both the claim that the assessment is designed to make and the feedback that can result from observation of performance. Third consideration: the need to measure the students’ explicit as well as their implicit knowledge of grammar, but also the students’ implicit or internalized knowledge of the grammar. Implications for operationalization: The learning mandates will affect the specification of test task so can be better to align some characteristics with instructional goals. Learning oriented-assessment of grammar promotes the collection of data on students’ ability and methods in classroom, and also collects information about students’ attitudes and

Grace Cid Bustos Verónica Sáez Zambrano Diego Ulloa Iglesias

feeling toward learning grammar. This data collection can be taken one point in time or accumulated over a period of time. In classroom assessment design, the scoring process results in a written or oral evaluation of candidate

responses. At the same time, this provides learners with summative or formative evaluation as for example

feedback. Therefore, scoring process allows test-takers to discover themselves, positive and negative

evidence on their grammatical ability. The information resulting from achievements test can provide much

more meaningful and constructive guidance on what to notice and how to improve. Feedback and scoring

method can involve students; this can develop their capacity for self-assessment, and also develop the

responsibility of their own learning.

Planning for further learning: The test blueprint should include explicit information on how the assessment plans to satisfy the learning mandate. Teachers have many options for presenting assessment results to students. They could present student with feedback, a score for each test component, scoring rubrics, narrative summary of teachers’ observation, etc.

Consideration from L2 learning theory

In implementing learning-oriented assessment of grammar, teachers need to consider how assessment relates to and can help promote grammar acquisition. This will affect not only what is and how is assessed, but also when in the lesson grammar knowledge are best assessed, and what the results mean for learners to improve.

SLA processes – briefly revisited: Research in SLA suggests that learning an L2 involves three simultaneously process: Input processing: relates to how the learner understands the meaning of a new grammatical feature or how form-meaning connections are made. System change: refers to how learners accommodate new grammatical forms to their interlanguage and how this change helps restructure their interlanguage. Output processing: relates to how learners access or make use of implicit grammatical knowledge to produce utterances spontaneously in real time. Assessing for intake: This process is described as the first critical stage of acquisition, as the process of converting input into intake. Students are given a communicative language classroom and are encouraged to use tasks in which they must use language meaningfully and use comprehensible input as an essential component of instruction. Assessing for intake requires learners understand the target forms, but do not produce them themselves. This can be achieved by selected-response and limited-production tasks in which learners need to make form-meaning connections. Assessing to push restructuring: Once input has been converted into intake, the new grammatical feature is ready to be accommodated into the learners’ developing linguistic system. To initiate this process, teaches provide them with tasks that enable them to use the new grammatical forms in decreasingly controlled situations. By attending to grammatical input and by getting feedback learners are able to accommodate the differences between their interlanguage and the target language. Assessing for output processing: Even though learners have showed explicit knowledge of form and meaning of new grammatical points, it does not mean they can access this knowledge automatically in spontaneous communication. Learners need to be able to produce unplanned, meaningful output in real time showing that the grammatical knowledge is already unconscious part of their developing system of language knowledge.