Testing vocabulary english

For teachers at elementary or secondary schools these kinds of tests are very difficult to prepare, because of the big amount of curriculum covered through whole year or several years an

MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature

TESTING VOCABULARY

Diploma Thesis Brno 2009

I declare that I have written my diploma thesis myself and used only the sources listed

in the enclosed bibliography

I agree with this diploma thesis being deposited in the Library of the Faculty of Education at the Masaryk University and with its being made available for academic purposes

Ivana Pavlů

I would like to express my thanks to Mgr Naděžda Vojtková for her guidance, kind help and her comments on my work

THEORETICAL PART

Introduction 6

TESTING 7

1 Basic division of tests 7

2 Reasons for testing 7

3 Principles of tests 11

3.1 Reliability 11

3.2 Validity 12

4 How to write tests 15

5 Types of tests 17

5.1 Multiple choice 18

5.2 Cloze test 19

5.3 Dictation 20

5.4 True/false 21

5.5 Questions and answers (open questions) 22

5.6 Gap-filling 22

5.7 Transformation 22

5.8 Rewriting 23

5.9 Matching 23

5.10 Error correction 24

5.11 Essay 24

5.12 Translation 25

5.13 Rearranging 25

5.14 Information transfer 25

VOCABULARY 26

6 Basic aspects of vocabulary 26

7 Selection and size of vocabulary 27

8 Why test vocabulary? 29

9 Vocabulary testing techniques 30

9.1 Multiple choice 31

9.2 Cloze test 32

9.3 Word formation 32

9.4 Matching 32

9.5 Odd one out 33

9.6 Writing sentences 34

9.7 Dictation 34

9.8 Sentence completion 34

9.9 Definitions 34

9.10 Translation 35

9.11 Writing 35

9.12 Reading 36

9.13 Oral testing 36

9.14 Associations 37

9.15 Placing 37

9.17 Transformation 37

9.18 Substitution 38

PRACTICAL PART Introduction 39

10 Description of the tested groups 41

11 Criteria of measuring the effectiveness 43

12 Informal assessment 43

12.1 Cards - method of translation 43

12.2 Monolingual dictionary 48

12.3 Cards - method of definition 48

12.4 Self-testing through textbooks 50

12.5 Testing on the Internet 53

13 Formal testing 54

13.1 Definitions 55

13.2 Sentence completion and writing sentences 57

15.3 True/false, matching, odd one out 59

13.4 Dictation 63

13.5 Multiple choice 65

13.6 Oral testing 66

13.7 Cloze test 67

14 Summary of the practical part 68

Conclusion 70

Resume 71

Bibliography 73

Appendix 75

THEORETICAL PART

Introduction

The main subject of my thesis is testing vocabulary The thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part In the theoretical part I will try to summarize various kinds of tests, then I will focus on those methods of testing which would be suitable for testing vocabulary Besides I will also deal with the basic principles of tests such as validity and reliability and the question of size of vocabulary and if it is important to test

it In the practical part I will use various methods of testing vocabulary in real classes

As I teach at a secondary school, I have a great opportunity to use the methods in practice

There was a significant reason why I have chosen this topic I have been teaching for about eight years and since the beginning of my teaching career I have been aware of my weakness in teaching and testing vocabulary It was partly caused by the fact that in my teaching practice I was influenced by my own English teacher at my grammar school She was a great teacher but concerning teaching vocabulary, she did not pay much attention to it and she paid even less attention to testing vocabulary The only way she tested us was translation of a list of Czech words into English We always learned an amount of words and wrote the test but we did not know many of the words after several days Consequently, I was always better at grammar than at vocabulary because the teacher devoted much more time to it in her lessons I proceeded exactly in the same way in my teaching practice but I was never satisfied with it and this thesis is a good chance how to change it

In the thesis I want to explore some other ways of testing and my secret wish is

to do the testing more interesting or even amusing I want to stop the routine of English translations and started to be more creative Moreover, the other goal is to use the vocabulary more in practice or in context and to work with the words more intensively so that the students would remember them better

Czech-Many of the techniques described in the theoretical part will be used in my

would be easy to prepare and to correct but also inventive and raising students´ interests

in learning vocabulary

In the thesis I will sometimes use the word teacher which is replaced by the pronoun she as there are more women than men teachers.

TESTING

1 Basic division of tests

Standardised and non-standardised tests

• Standardised tests are those tests which were prepared by a team of professionals

which means that they are highly reliable

• Non-standardised tests are those prepared by an individual teacher according to

what she wants to cover in class This means that the tests are not as reliable as standardised tests but still they play an important role in lessons (Berka, Váňová 10)

2 Reasons for testing

There are many reasons for testing which authors of different methodological books present and they divide them according to various criteria

The most common reason is that tests show a kind of ability We need tests to find out the level of some knowledge of something According to Hughes “it is difficult

to imagine British and American universities accepting students from overseas without some knowledge of their proficiency in English The same is true for organisations hiring interpreters or translators They certainly need dependable measures of language ability ” (4)

We cannot avoid testing almost anywhere, Mcnamara says that “language tests play a powerful role in many people´s lives, acting as gateways at important transitional moments in education, in employment, and in moving from one country to another” (4)

For teachers the reason for testing is clear as they need to find out about their students´ progress (Hughes 4) Although tests are not very popular among students they

need to be taken regularly because teachers must learn if their students understand a language matter or not and in that case, it should be a signal for some revision of those pieces of language which were not understood well Moreover, at most Czech schools tests have to be done so that students could be marked according to them To be more specific, students have to be examined several times a semester The way of examination depends on every school management or even on the teacher of a particular subject However, the usual way of assessment is done through written tests or oral examinations which are the main criteria for the final marks.

Heaton divides teacher´s reasons for testing into several categories:

• Finding out about progress

• Encouraging students

• Finding out about learning difficulties

• Finding out about achievement

• Placing students

• Selecting students

• Finding out about proficiency (9-17)

In the following part the categories of reasons will be described in more detail

Finding out about progress

This is done through so called progress tests which “look back at what students

have achieved and are the most important kinds of tests for teachers” (Heaton 9) The author also claims that in progress tests student´s results should be very good, most of them should have about 80% or even 90% of correct answers, otherwise the subject of the test was not mastered and the teachers should find the mistake which may be in the content of the test or in the bad method of teaching The author adds that “the best progress test is one which students do not recognise as a test but see as simply an enjoyable and meaningful activity” (Heaton 9)

Encouraging students

Tests can also be useful in terms of showing students how they improve

Consequently, students, encouraged by their improvements, have new motivation for future studying The author highlights that people are always motivated by good results

in everything they do not just exams while bad results mostly discourage them (Heaton 10) This claim is very true and valid also for learning English, therefore students with excellent test results like learning English while the weaker students do not Moreover, test can enable students to experience success According to BBC:

in the 1970´s students in an intensive EFL program were taught in an unstructured conversation course They complained that though they had a lot of time to practise communicating, they felt as if they had not learned anything Not long afterwords a testing system was introduced and helped to give them a sense of satisfaction that they were accomplishing things (Frost, Testing and Assessment)

Finding out about learning difficulties

Teachers can learn about students´ problems with the language through tests

Such tests are called diagnostic tests and are used mainly for finding out student´s

difficulties The test must be well-prepared so that it could really find out what students

do not know The best time for such a test is at the beginning of a course or a school year (Heaton 11-12)

Finding out about achievement

For this we use so called achievement tests which are tests covering a large

amount of curriculum, for example, they may test whole year or even several years of study For teachers at elementary or secondary schools these kinds of tests are very difficult to prepare, because of the big amount of curriculum covered through whole year or several years and teachers do not know what to put into the test and what not to

as everything seems important to them Heaton advises to work with other colleagues on that to be more objective (Heaton 13-14)

Placing students

So called placement tests are used to divide students into groups according to

their level of knowledge The tests must not focus only on one part of English such as present simple but on the knowledge in broad term because we want to have an objective picture of student´s present level of English These tests should include

various types such as blank-filling , dictation or multiple choice (Heaton 15).

Selecting students

Tests for selecting students - we can come across such tests when we look for a job The main aim of these tests is to find the best candidate for a position which means that we do not measure their performance according to some criteria but we compare the

candidates with one another and try to choose best one Heaton talks about

norm-referenced testing “That is, we compare the performance of an individual with the other

individuals in the group (i.e the norm)” (Heaton 16)

In the Czech Republic children sometimes have to to pass an entrance examination when they want to attend a secondary school The examination is mostly a written test containing the main subject of the discipline which the child wants to study For example, a child who wants to study a technical school will probably take the entrance exam from mathematics,however, the requirements may vary from school to schools

In connection with these selection tests Heaton talks about so called washback

effect, which is quite a familiar term in methodology expressing how testing influences

learners, what impact it has on learning and teaching This means that the test can have either positive or negative effect on our teaching If the examination is well-prepared then both students and their teacher will profit from it but if the test is bad, it will have a negative effect on them (16-17)

Hughes explains that a test can influence people either positively or negatively Negative washback happens when all the work in the class starts to comfort to the demands of the test For example, the test we are going to write with our students contains only gap-filling activities, so the teachers practise only similar exercises so that her students were successful but generally it is harmful because students will be good only at one area So to reach a positive washback, the test should provoke improvement

of all students´ skills and preferably arise student´s taste for learning (1)

Finding out about proficiency

Mcnamara says that “whereas achievement tests relate to the past in that they measure what language that students have learned as a result of teaching, proficiency

tests look to the future situation of language use without necessarily any reference to the

previous process of teaching” (Mcnamara 7) To be specific, proficiency tests are focused on English used in a concrete area, mostly in an occupation It implies that these tests must contain tasks which the candidate will use in her/his future job Heaton gives an example of a clerk taking such a test “The test should concentrate on assessing the ability to write letters, to translate documents and possibly to read and write technical reports in English rather than an ability to write imaginative essays or hold conversations in English” (Heaton 17-18)

Besides the reasons for testing described above, Ur suggests another three The

first one is similar to the achievement test but the amount of curriculum is smaller, for

instance, when the teacher has finished a unit from a textbook then there is time to verify how well her students mastered a particular piece of language The second reason

is to make students study harder and the last reason and very true is to use tests to quieten a noisy class and make them concentrate (Ur 34) This is rather a double sword

as this reason may be easily misused by the teacher and she can flood her students by a heap of tests just because the students are too noisy and she does not know how to cope with them This may produce an impression that tests are only for punishment and may

be perceived only negatively

3 Principles of tests

“If you think that taking tests is difficult then you should try writing them” )(Frost, Test Writing)

Every test should fulfil some criteria to be useful and full-value, the basic ones

are validity and reliability In this chapter I am going to describe these two principles in

more detail

3.1 Reliability

This means that a test is reliable when the results do not differ at different times

of doing To be more specific, the result of the test should be more or less the same no matter if students are taking it on Monday morning or Friday afternoon Moreover, the

reliability is also guaranteed by the fair marking of the examiner This could be a problem when writing, for example, an essay Such tests are very subjective and it is almost impossible that two or even more people would have exactly the same view on a particular composition Heaton adds that examiners can be also influenced by comparing essays with one another For instance, he has just marked an excellent essay and now he is correcting rather an average one,as a result, he can give it worse mark than it really deserves (6) This disunity can be seen also at the school where I teach when students are passing their school-leaving exams Sometimes teachers cannot agree

on a mark because each of them has its own scale of assessment While one consider students´s performance very good, the other one sees it as an average performance This problem may be partly solved by the new school-leaving exam because we will have rubrics with descriptors of what should a student know when he or she wants to achieve mark one, mark two etc However, there can be several opinions on that again Frost points out that in an oral interview the examiner must not give preferential treatment to any student, he should treat all the same, he must stay objective (Frost, Test Writing)

Hughes suggests another causes of unreliability such as unclear instructions, ambiguous questions, items that enable the candidate to guess easily (4) These mistakes

do not happen to the international organisations or universities which have long-time tradition of giving examinations all over the world, because they have enough specialists to make the exams reliable However, when a teacher at a school decides to write a complete test herself, she can create unclear instructions etc although she wants

to do her best To avoid this I suggest to create several versions of the test and try one

in the class unofficially or discuss it with colleagues

to measure it.

Content validity

Hughes explains that this guarantees that the test will be relevant for a particular group of people containing particular structures:

Just what are the relevant structures will depend, of course upon the purpose of the test

We would not expect an achievement test for intermediate learners to contain just the same set of structures as one for advanced learners In order to judge whether or not a

test has content validity, we need a specification of the skills or structures etc that it is

meant to cover Such a specification should be made at a very early stage in test construction A comparison of test specification and test content is the basis for judgements as to content validity (Hughes 22)

All the things we set in the specification should be incorporated into the test In the specification teachers must put the things which are important to test Hughes points out that teachers sometimes try to avoid testing things which are hard to test in order to simplify their job but writing the specification should prevent it (Hughes 22-23)

Criterion-related validity

We compare our test with another test which must be independent There are two

kinds of such a criterion-related validity The first type is concurrent validity Hughes

set an example of a test where one part is an oral interview lasting for ten minutes In the interview the examiner should examine all the important things which learners have studied However, we are not sure if it is possible to cover all curriculum in ten minutes and there is a tendency to think that the exam should last about 45 minutes to be objective and to assess the learners´ knowledge fairly To find it out, we choose some students and try to examine them in both ways - forty-five minutes and ten minutes exams and then compare our results If both student´s performances have similar result, then our ten-minute exam is valid, if the results are very different, then the shorter exam

is not valid or objective (Hughes 23)

A person who is not a teacher can think that the results must be different, because one cannot judge someone´s ability in ten minutes but I suppose that the results will be roughly the same If the examiners or teachers have enough experience they will detect the student´s abilities quite easily In common lessons the teacher needs only a

few moments to find out, for example, whether her students has prepared for the lesson

or not at all

The second type of criterion-related validity is called predictive validity which

predicts how a students will perform in future (Hughes 25) A typical example would be some entrance tests to universities Their task is to “discover” students who have a potential to manage a particular kind of a study programme

Construct and face validity

The second sub-class is construct validity which means that the test examines

only the ability which it should examine such as reading ability (Hughes 26) The last

sub-type of validity is so called face validity “A test is said to have face validity if it

looks as if it measures what it is supposed to measure” (Hughes 27) For instance, when

a teacher creates a test which is supposed to test past simple tense but half of the questions test present simple tense, then the test is not face valid Here comes a threat that such a test would not be accepted by the learners, so face validity also means that learners accept the test

3.3 Practicality, variability, interest

Thornbury considers practicality another principle which is important for a good test He suggests that every test should be easy to mark and evaluate for the teacher (142) In my view, correcting and assessing a test should be as simple as possible, in addition, there should not be much space for several variants of a task because it takes

so much time when a teacher has to think about every item individually

Frost suggests two useful things that a good test should have Firstly, the test

must be variable The more types of exercises it has the longer and better the students

will concentrate on it because this prevents from decreasing their attention Secondly, the teacher should also bear in mind that an interesting test is always better than a boring one, so students definitely appreciate if the test has some interesting articles or sentences It can also be a bit funny, if the teacher does not lack the sense of humour (Frost, Test Writing)

4 How to write tests

Should we create our own test?

I depends mainly on the teacher which alternative she prefers In shops you can buy many books with tests but according to my experience, you often cannot use them straight away, you have to adapt them somehow for your students They can, for example, contain vocabulary that your students do not know and students would definitely protest However, these tests are a big source of inspiration and therefore very useful to have in your school

The other possibility is to use tests which are added to nearly every textbook I teach my student according to Headway textbooks and after every unit I give them a test from the textbook tests all the important thins from the covered unit However, these tests have to be sometimes slightly modified or even erased as some types of exercises would cause big problems to my students But on the whole, these tests help me to be objective and they ease my job a lot

The next alternative is to create your own test, Heaton claims that “ the best tests for the classroom are those tests which you write yourself ” (Heaton 23) In my view, creating our own tests where every sentence and word would be our original job are not realistic because it would take so much time But if we do not take it literally, then it is true The teacher can combine several sources and create a prefect test or she can use just some parts and create the rest herself Writing our own test enables the teacher, for example, to focus on those things with which her students had problems and check if they have understood it

Techniques to create a test

Ur suggests to focus on these things when creating a test:

Validity Check that your items really do test what they are meant to.

Clarity Make sure that instructions for each item are clear.

Do-ability The test should be quote do-able: not too difficult, with no trick questions Marking Decide exactly how you will assess each section of the test and how

weighting (percentage of the total grade) you will give it.

Interest Try to go for interesting content and tasks, in order to make the test more

motivating for the learners.

Heterogeneity The test should be such that lower-level students can feel that they are

able to do a substantial part of the test, while the higher-level ones have a chance to show what they know (Ur 42).

These are rather theoretical things which the teacher should think about when creating a test They all seem logical, but in my view, it is not so easy to find out before you try the test in a real class No matter how much we try to make our test perfect, we sometimes do not avoid some imperfections For example, although the teacher can think that her instructions are very clear, students may not understand them very well

Or we may think that the test we have created is very easy, however, most of our students fail it These things and many others are improving by getting experience in teaching

Heaton presents different attitude to test writing He points out that it is very difficult to to write a language test because there are not facts like in history or

geography He suggests a practical thing - to prepare a test framework, a kind of a

syllabus, where teachers note all the important key elements, moreover, it helps

teachers to prevent omitting something important Heaton explains in several steps how

to write a test According to his strategy I have tried to prepare a test framework covering one unit from Headway Elementary:

Grammar: there is/are

prepositions of placessome/any + countable nounsVocabulary: things in the house

places, food and drink

The other step is to give percentages to each item I decided to devote 60% to grammar and 40% to vocabulary, then I divided them this way

some/any + countable nouns 15%

Then he recommends to put numbers of items to each point like there is/are - 5

items etc Last step is to specify the functions we want to examine, for example, giving directions (here I use there is/are and prepositions of places) or describing rooms in the house (concerning things in the house) etc (Heaton 25-28, Soars 3-4).

Here is another way of writing a test

1) Choose the type of the test you want to make such as progress test or placement test.2) Write down what you want to put into the test, for example present simple tense etc.3) Decide about the length, format

4) Prepare some suitable exercises or texts

5) Give appropriate weight to the individual parts of the test

6) Create the test

7) Focus on the instructions and sample answers

8) Think about the marking scale

9) Write a key to the exercises

10) Write a more detailed key for those tasks where more options are possible

11) Write the test with your students

12) Interpret the test results and decide what was good and bad about the test (Frost, test writing)

Diagnostic tests analyse what the learners are good at and bad at In compliance with

this information, the teacher adapts her teaching strategy (Hughes 13)

Prognostic tests discover how a learner will be successful in a course or if he or she is

able to attend such a course.(Frost, Test Question Types)

There is a review of types of tasks which will be specified later on:

This is a question which consists of a so called stem and four options from which

only one is correct The examinee has to choose the right answer (Ur 38) The form of the multiple choice can also vary, here are three possible forms:

b He met Bob

c He began to shout.

d He phoned the police (“Multiplechoice”)

The biggest advantage of this kind of testing is that we do not have to worry about subjectivity because only one answer should be correct Secondly, it is very easy and quick for the examiner to correct this test because he or she just puts ticks or crosses On the other hand, Hughes proves that it does not show the real level of someone´s abilities because the examiner or the teacher cannot discover the knowledge

of grammar, for instance, because we do not know if the examinee can use it in writing

or speaking He explains that in multiple choice the chance for guess the right answer is

about 33 percent which means that from 100 questions someone is able to guess about

33 The result is that the teacher cannot be really sure if the student has mastered the curriculum (Hughes 60)

The other difficulty with multiple choice is that we have to find three distractors

which are items that would distract or confuse the examinee Therefore, it is hard to create a good multiple choice test This causes problems with more correct answers or even no correct answer This all means that it is very difficult and time-demanding to write such a test (Hughes 61)

Next disadvantage is that these tests also enable cheating because if a potential cheater looks at someone´s paper which is near, he or she can easily recognize what the person has answered as there can be seen circles A, B, C, or D (Hughes 62) In my view,

it can be prevented by giving several versions of tests and I always do it because with one version the test would not be valid

5.2 Cloze test

Cloze test is test based on a text with gaps which are put there regularly after every seventh, eighth or ninth word The examinee has to complete the gaps with appropriate words Mostly more than one option is possible The first three or more lines of the text are without gaps (Scrivener 261)

Example of a cloze test:

Seventy years ago no one ever heard the word ‘robot’ It first used by a Czechoslovakian writer, Karel Capek the 1920´s He wrote a play about a scientist invents machines which he robots, from the Czech word

robota, meaning ‘slave-like work’… (O´Connell 193).

The advantage of cloze tests is that it is quite easy to create them The teacher just needs to find a suitable text and delete words from it Nevertheless, Hughes does not consider cloze tests much reliable because we do not know what ability (speaking, writing, reading etc.) of the examinee it shows Moreover, the regular interval of every ninth word does not work very well because some deleted words a are very difficult to determine (Hughes 62-67)

This is a kind of cloze test but with initial letters of words that are omitted

Example of a C-Test:

There are usually five men in the crew of a fire engine One o _them dri _ the eng _ The lea _ sits bes _ the dri _ The ot _ firemen s _ inside t _ cab o _ the f _ engine.T _ leader h _ usually be _ in t _ Fire Ser _ for ma _ years (Hughes 71)

This test is more advantageous for the examinee as the texts are shorter and less difficult On the other hand, the gaps are so close to one another that the learner can get lost in the text (Hughes 71)

5.3 Dictation

The examiner dictates a text and students write it down Here we examine mainly spelling or pronunciation and also listening Dictation is an easy way of testing for the teacher because the preparation is minimal (Ur 40) However, it is demanding to assess such tests, Hughes recommends that we should consider the dictation correct as long as there is the right order of words and that misspelled words should be accepted because phonologically it is correct (Hughes 71-72)

Another disadvantage is the difficulty of assessment Generally, teachers themselves determine which errors are considered serious and which are just mild ones

It is advisable to set the scale of assessment before we start to correct There is also the question of objectivity because every teacher will look the dictations from her own perspective To prevent this we can use an alternative to dictation which is called

paused dictation which is a text with missing words, students fill in the missing words

while the teacher dictates (Berka, Váňová 36-37)

Anglická synonyma českého slovesa „dostat“ jsou:

to give S N

to receive S N

to get S N

to become S N (Berka, Váňová 19).

Another variation is so called correction form where students has to first decide

if the sentence given is correct or not If not, he or she has to correct it:

Určete, obsahuje-li věta “I was ill since last Sunday” mluvnickou

chybu Pokud je věta správná, označte ji písmenem S, pokud není

vyznačte písmeno N a napiště správný tvar na k tomu určený řádek.

Řešení: S N

have been (Berka, Váňová 19)

In the following example the sentence contains mistakes, testee has to decide which word is not correct:

A friend of me used saying: “Better late then never”

A B C D E F G H I

Řešení: C:mine, E: to say, H: than (Berka, Váňová 19).

True/false technique is quite easy and economical to do as well as to correct (Ur

38-39) On the other hand if the exercise is based on simple true/false principle, there is

a danger that the student will guess the right answer as the percentage of successfulness

is 50% Berka, Váňová suggest to give three possible answers to prevent this: true, false and not mentioned in the given text (20).

5.5 Questions and answers (open questions)

This type of exercise can be based on a text or a listening but it does not have to

be based on anything as well Ur advises not to enable too many options of the answers

so as not to make it difficult to correct (Ur 38-39)

Example of questions and answers:

Answer the following questions

What was the relationship between Jane Eyre and Mrs Reed?

What was Mr Rochester like?

Example of gap-filling with there is/there are:

a little dog in the park; also a big cat In this house eight little rooms and a big kitchen two lamps on the wall but only one lamp on that wall (Rosset 8)

5.7 Transformation

In this type students are given sentences which they have to put into another form, for example, to put sentences in past simple tense into past perfect tense (Ur 38) They are not difficult either to create or to correct

Example of transformation:

Put the following sentences into past simple tense:

She likes her job

Jane wears jeans

They clean the windows

5.8 Rewriting

This is similar to transformation but here students have to transform a sentence

in the way that it means the same as the first one (Frost) In my view, these sentences are quite troublesome to form, therefore I would use these borrow these exercises from real specialists

This is an example of matching exercise focused on idioms:

G Všude dobře, doma nejlépe.

I Sejde z očí, sejde z mysli.

C Kdo se směje naposled, ten se směje nejlépe.

H Vrána k vráně sedá.

E Kuj železo, dokud je žhavé.

D Lepší vrabec v hrsti, než holub na střeše.

A Dvakrát měř, jednou řež.

A Look before you leap.

B As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.

C He laughs best who laughs last.

D A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

E Make hay while the sun shines.

F An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

G East, west, home best.

H Birds of a feather flock together.

I Out of sight, out of mind.

J My house, my castle (Berka, Váňová 28)

5.10 Error correction

Students are given sentences with errors which concern mainly grammar (verb forms, missing verbs or letters etc.) Their task is to find the mistakes and correct them The only problem with this method is that sometimes there can be more than one way of correction (Frost, Test Question Types)

Example of error correction:

Where was you yesterday?

My aunt don´t drive a car

5.11 Essay

The examinee has to write a text on a given topic and mostly in a particular length and form It tests writing abilities and it is not difficult to prepare, however, it is very demanding and time-consuming to correct such essays because the examiner has to watch many aspects of the language such as spelling, grammar, vocabulary, punctuation etc (Ur 41) Moreover, there is a danger of subjectivity in correction which I can confirm from my personal experience; last year at all secondary schools students of the fourth grade were to take a sample test from writing which is one of the new school-leaving exam Every essay had to be corrected by two teachers and their final results had to be the same, in other words, they had to agree on the result and on the mark Berka, Váňová mention similar event: “ at a conference of language schools in Brno

32 experienced examiners marked one particular essay with marks ranging from 1 to 4

”(51)

There are three main techniques how to assess essays The first one is called

mechanic method and it arises from mechanical counting of mistakes and setting a

mark The second method is called analytical method in which examiners evaluate

wider range of things such as the form and style, vocabulary, grammar, ability to

transmit information The last method is called impressive method, here every essay is

read and assessed by two or three examiners The final result is then made from the

average of all three (Berka, Váňová 51-53) This could be the solution for assessment of the written part of the new school-leaving exam; to make the average of the two marks.

Essays have various forms but the most used forms are formal and informal essays Students are said to write a formal letter such as an application for a job In informal writing they write about more personal things such as holiday, friends, hobbies etc

Except subjectivity there are other two aspects which are typical for essays At first, there is not a prototype of an essay, every essay is original Secondly, the examinee can freely express his or her feelings, share opinions and ideas The main priority of an essay is that the student can show his or her ability to write and ability to tell particular pieces of information

5.12 Translation

This is a damned as well as praised method Students receive sentences or a text

in their mother tongue and their task is to translate them into English Although, the method is easy for the teacher, students hate it because it is very difficult for them It also prevents students thinking directly in English and they tend to translate things in their minds which is not good

Ur claims that it is a quick way how to find out about students´s knowledge but marking may be quite difficult as there may be tens of variations (40)

Example of information transfer:

Complete this table.

Part of tree Use

a) flesh of fruit food, drink, flour

6 Basic aspects of vocabulary

“If language structures make up the skeleton of language, then it is vocabulary that provides the vital organs and the flesh” (Harmer 153)

In other words, no matter how brilliantly one masters his/her English grammar, without the knowledge of vocabulary it is useless because words are the basis that create

the speech Scrivener adds that “A student who says Yesterday Go Disco And friends

Dancing will almost certainly get much of his message over despite completely

avoiding grammar - the meaning is conveyed by the vocabulary alone” (Scrivener 73)

In the past vocabulary was underestimated and it was perceived only as a medium needed for teaching grammar but nowadays vocabulary has become more acknowledged by methodologists (Harmer 153-154) However, I still feel that vocabulary is seen as something less important than grammar and we do not focus on it

as much as we should especially at state schools According to my personal experience,

it can be caused by the fact that vocabulary is something that most students can learn more easily than grammar and get good marks, they do not have to understand anything but they have to only learn vocabulary by heart It raises impression that vocabulary is something less important because it is in fact easy

However, to know a word is a broader term because we need to know several aspects of it Ur describes the individual aspects in this order: form, grammar,

collocation, meaning, word formation.

To know the form of a word means to know the pronunciation and spelling of a word (Ur 60) The other aspect is grammar if it is necessary, for example, when

teaching irregular verbs we should present the other two forms, as well Similarly, when

teaching a noun with irregular plural form such as woman, we should teach the plural form immediately Another important thing is teaching collocations, so that students

know in what context they can use the word, for instance, verbs do and make can be

used with different situations, we can say do the shopping but not make the shopping

(Ur 60)

The next aspect is meaning which can be divided into several categories The most used are synonyms (pretty - beautiful), antonyms (young - old) and hyponyms

(lion, cat, zebra - animals)

More advanced learners will probably deal with word formation in which we

create new words by modification of the old ones, there are several ways how to form a

new word such as compounding (second-hand), adding a prefix (in/decisive) or a suffix

(comfort/able) etc.

The last basic thing is to know the word class, we usually distinguish eight word

classes:

1 nouns (sun, computer) 5 verbs (take, decide)

2 adjectives (long, happy) 6 adverbs (always, never)

3 pronouns (I, him) 7 prepositions (on, by)

4 numerals (first, two) 8 conjunctions (or, and) (Ur 60-62).

7 Selection and size of vocabulary

There is a problem with teaching vocabulary because there are hardly any rules

on which vocabulary to teach In grammar this is quite obvious as you cannot teach students present perfect before present simple In vocabulary there is only one rule or tool which says to teach concrete words before abstract ones (Harmer 154) Students - beginners are first taught words that they can use immediately as they are let to practise these words in lessons through easy speaking activities, for example, asking about their names, ages, hobbies etc However, the more words they learn the more difficult it is to remember them or the words are so specific that they are not easy usable (Scrivener 74)

In my view, vocabulary of English as a foreign language reminds me of vocabulary of a baby learning its mother tongue, it first learns words which it can come across, such as members of family, things at home, some food and drink etc Most textbooks proceed this way, at least in the first few units the vocabulary is roughly the same in every textbook However, later on vocabulary differs according to the subject of each unit.

So what vocabulary is important for our students? Harmer presents two criteria

which are frequency and coverage The first term means that we teach words according

to their frequency of usage For example, word love is more frequent than a word like

innocence The latter term means that we should prefer teaching words that stand for

more things than just one, for example, the word book has broader meaning than

notebook (Harmer 154).

However, Harmer adds that we cannot follow the principle of frequency so strictly because words that are the most frequent in English are not the most useful automatically In other words, the rule “the more frequent the more helpful”, is not valid (154)

A native speaker has a vocabulary about 20,000 words whereas a good learner who has studied English for several years knows only around 5,000 words Thornbury mentions that a student of English would need about 18 years of studying to be able to receive the same amount of vocabulary which a native speaker absorbs only in one year The author claims that the number of words which every student needs to make

themselves understood is 2,000 words, this is called core vocabulary This amount is used by native speakers in conversation as well as in so called defining vocabulary

which occurs in monolingual dictionary (20-21)

Another aspect has to be taken into account; passive versus active vocabulary

Active vocabulary are words that students are able to use in speech and which they

remember whilst passive vocabulary means vocabulary which students recognize in a

text, they understand it but they cannot use it actively Although this division seems easy, it is not as clear as it looks like because every student perceives in a different way and this results that though we wanted to teach him or her some active vocabulary, he or she may know it only passively and if we just needed to extend their vocabulary with some passive words, they may remember them perfectly Of course at schools we try to

influence what vocabulary our students learn but it is not easy at all The golden rule is that the more students work with words the better they remember them (Harmer 159-160) Thornbury adds that the teacher should somehow transmit the enthusiasm from vocabulary learning into her students and also show them a lot of ways how students can acquire new vocabulary through self-study (Thornbury 22).

8 Why test vocabulary?

“Why test anything?” Thornbury explains that similarly we could ask about anything The main reason for testing is that it gives us information about how well our students proceed in their learning of English It gives a useful feedback to both teachers and students In addition, when the teacher announces her students that a vocabulary test

is coming in a period of time, they will probably start to study the vocabulary harder than before, so it will have a positive effect (129) In general, testing helps to “recycle” vocabulary as well as to consolidate it

However, vocabulary testing does not have to be always marked, we can prepare

a test on vocabulary which will only revise words The ideal model is to revise vocabulary from the previous lesson at the beginning of another lesson Thornbury calls

What to test?

We can test the basic aspects of words which are written and spoken forms as well as collocations, derivations, meaning, part of speech, relative frequency and certain register style Testing the written and spoken forms of words is the most frequent type

at state schools in the Czech Republic, students are given a set of words which they have to translate, this method is very easy and economical for the teacher However, it does not really show students´ knowledge of vocabulary because they just learn many

and many words by heart without connection to the real world To avoid this, we have to

decide about the purpose of such a test before giving a test to our students These

purposes have already been mentioned at the beginning of this chapter

According to the purpose we design the test, which is either contextualised or

de-contextualised Contextualised test means that the vocabulary is examined through a

text whereas in de-contextualised test there are only words without any text If the

teacher needs to test student´s knowledge of spelling, he can dictate words without any context On the other hand, when we test meanings of words, we have to put them into

a context These contextualised tests can be further divided into tests that test active

vocabulary or passive vocabulary These are examples presented by Thornbury

Example of a test for passive vocabulary, where students do not have to invent any words, they just circle the right letter:

Choose the best word to complete each sentence:

1) The flight attendant asked the passengers to _ attention

to the safety demonstration.

a give b devote c pay d lend

2) A severe hurricane in the South Pacific has _ many lives.

a claimed b taken c killed destroyed (Thornbury 131)

Example of a test for active vocabulary, where students have to invent the right word which fits into each sentence.:

Choose the best word to complete each sentence:

1) The flight attendant asked the passengers to _ attention to

the safety demonstration.

2) A severe hurricane in the South Pacific has _ many lives (Thornbury 131)

9 Vocabulary testing techniques

We can use a lot of types of techniques when testing vocabulary In this chapter I

am going to show the most used ones

9.1 Multiple choice

As I wrote in the chapter Types of tests, this technique is easy to mark but quite difficult to design We can use it either for testing single words, words in sentences or in texts

Single words can be tested through definitions, for example:

tangle means a) type of dance

b) a tropical forest c) a confused mass d) a kind of fruit (Thornbury 132).

Words can be tested in sentences, for example:

There is a good _ at the Odeon tonight.

A) screen B) film C) showing D) acting (Heaton 79).

Here we must be aware of more than one possible answers as in the following example where B and also D are possible:

We went to Jimmy´s Restaurant last night and had an excellent

there.

A) plate B) meal C) cook D) dish (Heaton 80).

We have to take into account the fact that students may choose the right answer without knowing the word just by the process of elimination There is 25% chance that the student guesses the right answer if there are four options, if there are only three options the chance is much bigger, of course (Ur 72) Moreover, in multiple choice students do not use the vocabulary actively, they do not have to produce any items (Thornbury 132)

Thornbury presents another way of using multiple choice, which is quite

unusual and it is contextualized choice test Here the options are put directly into a text,

for example:

CANCER 22 June-22 July

Someone else is (a plying; b calling; c singing;) the tune and for the moment you´re quite happy to go (a along; b around; c away) with what seems like a reasonable idea Hobbies (a make; b use; c take) up far too much time and children could need support with a new activity (132)

9.2 Cloze test

Another way how vocabulary can be tested is cloze test This type examines

active vocabulary because students are not given any options, they just have a text with

gaps (Thornbury 133) It is not exactly clear if it belongs to testing vocabulary or rather

to testing reading and again there is a problem with more possible answers To prevent this, we can use C-test where the beginnings of words are already given

The next time you go to the supermarket don´t forget to buy the

(0) BIGGEST bottle of kitchen cleaner you can to (1) your BIG

work surface Recent (2) research in America has shown that the INFECT

kitchen is often the most (3) of all the rooms in the home SCIENCE The (4) of food, heat and dampness means the kitchen is

HYGIENE (5) a breeding ground for bacteria that can cause stomach upsets COMBINE and vomiting . (“Word Formation”)

9.4 Matching

Through matching we normally test the meaning of words, usually words of the opposite meaning Students do not produce any vocabulary, they only match given

words This type of exercise is easier to design than multiple choice but Ur stresses that the last pair of words, if the student has matched the pairs correctly, can be matched without any knowledge because they are left This can be prevented by giving more options in one column than in the other one (72)

There are also other possibilities than just matching words of opposite meaning

We can design a test where words and pictures are being matched, for example fruit or means of transport etc Another modification can be putting words into appropriate category, for instance, fruit and vegetables:

Put these words into the correct column:

apple, grape, carrot, banana, cauliflower, spinach,

strawberry, potato, cherry, melon

Fruit Vegetables

Or students can match the right beginnings and endings of sentences according

to their meaning:

Which beginning goes with which ending?

1 He planted a the stones and weeds

2 She picked b some beautiful red apples

3 She dug up c the seeds in three separate rows (Scrivener 184).

9.5 Odd one out

Students have to determine which item does not belong among the others The amount of items can be various This kind of exercise is easy to prepare, however, the teacher must know which words her students know so that they could find the odd one

It also test only the meaning of words, but it can be both useful and interesting for the students (Ur 72)

Example:

Find the odd word: parrot hen eagle cow penguin goose sparrow

9.6 Writing sentences

Students have to make sentences from given words For example: healthy, violence, elephant etc This is a very interesting exercise which is worth trying but teachers must bear in mind that it will not be easy to mark such exercise easily (Ur 72) Moreover, the students must be at least pre-intermediate to be able to create such specific sentences On the other hand, students will show if they can use a particular word in context

9.8 Sentence completion

Students are given incomplete sentences containing words that we need to test Their task is to complete these sentences so that they make sense For example:

Finish the following sentences:

1 I feel depressed when

2 I never have an appetite when

3 It was a great relief when (Ur 72-74)

Simple example of a definition:

It is an animal which likes bananas (monkey)

9.10 Translation

Learners can be tested through translation quite well and it can test both meaning and form, however, we may have troubles with finding the right equivalent between the two languages (Ur 72)

In compliance with my experience, it is not such a radical problem when we test just words, because I always test vocabulary from only one or two lessons, so learners know which words are required On the other hand, translation of whole sentences sometimes enables several options

As I have indicated above, through translation we can test either single words or whole sentences In my view, sentence translation is the most difficult type of testing, so

I do not use it in my lessons any more, because it always led to discouragement among students as they got bad marks for that Another possibility is to test collocations or phrases which could be a well-balanced compromise between testing single words and sentences Here students must show if they can use the words in context which I miss when I test just single words

9.11 Writing

This type of testing is productive, students have to show their word knowledge,

so the test is valid but two teachers would not probably come to exactly the same result

in scoring which means that such testing is not very reliable Thornbury suggests to set

as accurate demands as possible to increase reliability and to give criteria according to

which the teacher will correct the test Such criteria are lexical density, lexical variety and lexical sophistication.

Lexical density is content words which are the opposite of function words, these

words carry the meaning, they are nouns, adjectives and verbs

Lexical variety measures how various the text is, usage of different words,

structures etc Lexical sophistication means usage of infrequent vocabulary in writing

which are those words that do not belong to the group of 2,000 most used words in English (Thornbury 131-136)

I see writing as a specific type of verifying students ability to apply both word

knowledge and grammatical structures in context Here students can use all knowledge they have acquired so far, not just translate words or fill in gaps.

9.12 Reading

Through reading we can test passive vocabulary mostly which is also useful for students as they learn to guess meaning of words from context, they will need this ability a lot in their future studies of English As an example here is a part of a reading test:

An eight-month old hippopotamus named Susan began a

journey by lorry and plane yesterday from the National Zoo in

Washington to Singapore Zoo-keeper hope that she will be a

companion for a lonely male hippopotamus, reports say Singapore

Zoo has spent a long time looking for a new mate for their hippo,

named Congo Ever since the death of Lucy, his mate, Congo has

been sad and lonely, a spokesman said etc.

Now decide if these statements are true or false:

_ 1 Susan was a gift from Washington National Zoo to Singapore Zoo

_ 2 Congo, a male hippopotamus in Washington Zoo, was sad and

_ lonely because Susan had left for Singapore

3 Susan was just over one year old when she left the National Zoo

_ in Washington (Heaton 85)

9.13 Oral testing

To know a word also means to be able to pronounce it well Doff suggests short oral tests on various topics such as talking about family, describing my village etc He explains how to organize this in a larger class: The teachers gives her students several topics which students have to prepare at home In about a week, the teacher asks different students about one of the topic, the examination lasts not more than one minute The rest of the class has another job to do such as reading or writing

Teacher should evaluate both content and fluency Doff has designed this simple

table:

CONTENT 1 2 3 4 5

(Doff 267)

Number 5 represents the best performance while 1 is the worst This means that

10 is the highest number For instance, when the student is able to speak fluently without any difficulty and he/she can express themselves easily, we can give them 5 + 5 When the student mispronounces words and says only a few sentences we should give him/her 3 + 4 (Doff 266-267)

This short oral examination could be a compromise for those teachers who want

to test their students somehow but at the same time they do not want to lose too much time with it

9.14 Associations

Students have to underline those words which belong to the key word:

“FURNITURE: house, table, floor, window, curtain, bed, kitchen, chair” (Berka, Váňová 46)

9.15 Placing

Students underline those words which relate to e.g movement:

“think, run, keep, walk, jump, answer” (Berka, Váňová 47)

9.16 Synonyms and antonyms

Students have to write down words of the same meaning:

Students have to rewrite a sentence but with the same meaning:

“Bob is very good at football

He plays football ” (Berka, Váňová 48)

PRACTICAL PART

Introduction

In the practical part I concentrated on the use of the testing techniques in practice The aim of the research was to find out how effective each method was in practice The research is divided into two main parts which are informal assessment and formal testing I use the term informal assessment for practising vocabulary for which students do not get marks, it should help students to prepare for formal testing On the other hand, the term formal assessment is used for those techniques for which students get marks

In the informal assessment I have focused on card technique, which I will

describe in the following chapter, the usage of the Internet and I will present several textbooks which are good for practising vocabulary

Formal testing comprises tests for which students receive marks which act the significant role in the final assessment I have tried to test vocabulary through several alternative ways in contrast with translation which I have used so far in my lessons I have presented these methods in the theoretical part in more detail

I have done my practical research at the secondary school where I am teaching nowadays I have chosen four classes where two of them are of pre-intermediate level and the other two are of intermediate level, this enables to compare results and the process itself in two similar classes

However, the level is probably the only feature which the two classes have in common In other aspects such as discipline, motivation, marks, atmosphere in lessons they differ a lot The main thing which influences teaching and learning process is different sex To be more specific, in girls´ classes there are no problems with discipline, motivation and the learning atmosphere is mostly very good On the contrary, in boys´ classes teachers often have to deal with discipline problems, disturbing behaviour and lack of motivation Therefore, I have chosen both my best classes and the classes which are a bit problematic to compare if the testing vocabulary would have the same effect on them

For simplification I have given the classes letters A, B, C and D where A and B are girls and C and D are boys I have not applied all the methods in all four groups because not all of them were suitable in every class, it depended on several factors according to which I have decided The significant factor was the earlier mentioned sex, another features were the age of the students, their motivation etc The reason is that what works perfectly in one class, can be a total catastrophe in another one I have described these choices in the research again

The effectiveness of the methods has been examined through a kind of feedback from my students as well as my own assessment After every new activity students were either asked to express their direct feelings or they were given a simple questionnaire