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Testing Vocabulary: 5.1 Selection of Items

The document discusses considerations for selecting vocabulary items for inclusion in language tests. It notes that selecting items that test vocabulary rarely used in English textbooks but frequently found is a challenging task. Items should be chosen to test active or passive vocabulary in spoken or written contexts. Effective distractors for multiple choice tests include false synonyms unrelated to the context and words related to but different from the key word. Tests should also measure students' control and discrimination of vocabulary, avoiding structures too difficult for their level.

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Jiezel Tongson
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438 views9 pages

Testing Vocabulary: 5.1 Selection of Items

The document discusses considerations for selecting vocabulary items for inclusion in language tests. It notes that selecting items that test vocabulary rarely used in English textbooks but frequently found is a challenging task. Items should be chosen to test active or passive vocabulary in spoken or written contexts. Effective distractors for multiple choice tests include false synonyms unrelated to the context and words related to but different from the key word. Tests should also measure students' control and discrimination of vocabulary, avoiding structures too difficult for their level.

Uploaded by

Jiezel Tongson
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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5.

TESTING
VOCABULARY
5.1 SELECTION OF ITEMS
5.1 Selection of Items
A careful selection, or sampling, of lexical
items for inclusion in a test is generally a
most exacting task. Many of the more
traditional types vocabulary tests are designed
in such a way that they test a knowledge of
words which, though frequently found in
many English textbooks, are rarely used in
The first task for the writer of a vocabulary tests is to determine the
degree to which he or she wishes to concentrate on testing the students’
active or passive vocabulary.
The next task is to decide whether the lexical items in the test should be
taken from the spoken or the written language.
Selection of vocabulary can thus be thought of as falling into the
following rough divisions according to the four major language skills:
Listening: passive/spoken
Reading: passive/written
Speaking: active/spoken
Writing: active/written

The following error, however may be one of verb
patterning or simply the wrong choice of verb:
For example:
Is the government going to contribute the new industry?
The correct version would be:
Is the government going to contribute to the new industry?

If caused by the wrong choice of verb, it would be:
Is the government going to subsidise the new industry?
Moreover, according to the findings of research
conducted into the effectiveness of distractors in
multiple-choice vocabulary tests, those distractors
based on students’ incorrect answers in cloze tests
(though moderately useful) were found to be less
powerful than:
(a)The use of false synonyms (i.e words with equivalent
meanings to the key word underlined or shown in italics in
the sentence but inappropriate in the particular context):
Example: I’d like to book two……… in the circle, please.
seats = correct word
chairs = false synonym
(b) Contextually relevant items (i.e. words related
to the context but different in meaning to the key
word in the sentence):

‘How much is a …………………… to Tokyo,


please?’
‘Nine hundred yen, and a return is sixteen hundred
yen.
single = correct word
But testing the extent of a student’s vocabulary is
only one aspect of the whole problem: control of
the vocabulary at his or her disposal must also be
measured. An ability to discriminate between
words is of the utmost importance at all but the
elementary levels. In broader terms, this ability to
discriminate may be regarded as developing a feel
for the language.
 Tests of vocabulary should avoid
grammatical structures which the students
may find difficult to comprehend. Similarly,
tests of grammar should contain only those
lexical items which present no difficulty to
the students.

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