Originally designed for students in Grades 3 through 5, MOCCA (formerly the Multiple-choice Online Causal Comprehension Assessment), identifies students who struggle with comprehension, and helps uncover why they struggle. There are many reasons why students might not comprehend what they read. They may struggle with decoding, or reading words…

The present study examined the technical adequacy of maze-selection tasks constructed in 2 different ways: typical versus novel. We selected distractors for each measure systematically based on rules related to the content of the passage and the part of speech of the correct choice. Participants included 262 middle school students who were…

Previous research investigating the effectiveness of textual enhancement as a tool to draw adult second language (L2) learners' attention to the targeted linguistic form has consistently produced mixed results. This article examines how L2 form recognition and reading comprehension are affected by different types of textual enhancement.…

Reading texts with historical and sociopolitical content in a foreign language is often a challenge for second language students. The obstacles encountered by students should be of concern to language instructors. Lack of background knowledge frequently causes the reader to abandon the reading activity with a sense of disappointment and…

Cloze tests have been widely used for measuring reading comprehension since their introducing to the testing world by Taylor in 1953. But in 1982, Klein-Braley criticized cloze procedure mostly for their deletion and scoring problems. They introduced their newly developed testing procedure, C-test, which was an evolved form of cloze tests without…

WITH EXISTING COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY, TESTS FOR SCREENING COLLEGE APPLICANTS CAN BE WRITTEN BY COMPUTERS. RESULTS OF A 72-ITEM COMPUTER-WRITTEN SYNONYMS TEST WERE COMPARED WITH THOSE OF THE ETS WIDE RANGE VOCABULARY TEST. BOTH TESTS WERE ADMINISTERED IN THE FALL OF 1965 TO ENTERING UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FRESHMEN. AT THE END OF THE FIRST SEMESTER, THESE…

Used the rule-space methodology to analyze performance on a multiple-choice reading comprehension test by students of English as a Second Language in Japan in an international business setting. Findings indicate that the rule-space methodology can explain performance on complex verbal tasks, such as reading tests, and provide diagnostic scores to…

The purpose of this released exercise set is to provide easy access to released exercises from the reading/literature assessment conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 1979-80. Exercises were used to assess the attainments of samples of 9 year olds, 13 year olds and 17 year olds. Upon this basis, generalizations…

The reading comprehension tests, one for nine-year-olds usually in grade 3 and one for thirteen-year-olds usually in grade 7, were developed from released items on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The tests were constructed to assess student achievement against a national norm, by comparing individual student scores to the national…

The keylist format (rather than the conventional multiple-choice format) for item presentation provides a machine-scorable surrogate for a truly free-response test. In this format, the examinee is required to think of an answer, look it up in a long ordered list, and enter its number on an answer sheet. The introduction of keylist items into…

The provincial results of the English 33 Achievement Test administered June 8, 1982, as part of the Student Achievement Testing Program of Alberta Education are presented in this report. Following a list of the requirements of Part A (written expression), the first section describes the categories used to assess total expression and the scoring…

This study examines the relationship between an open-ended cloze test and its multiple-choice versions generated from three sources: (1) interlingual learner-generated distractors--distractors selected from one language group and administered to a different language group, (2) intralingual learner-generated distractors--distractors selected from…

This handbook is a guide to the "Test Development Notebook" of the System for Pupil and Program Evaluation and Development (SPPED). It describes the contents and organization of the notebook, suggests various uses of the exercises, provides sample test designs, outlines test production procedures, and offers guidelines for score…

The Secondary Level English Proficiency (SLEP) test is a measure of ability in understanding spoken and written English. It is designed for use with students entering grades 7 through 12 whose native language is other than English. Previously offered on a limited basis at test centers established by the Educational Testing Service, the SLEP is now…