1. Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción
How to assess Grammar
“How to assess Grammar”
Ingrid Bello Acuña,
Paulina Escobar Aguayo.
June 25th, 2012.
How to assess grammar

2. CHAPTER 5
First, the characteristics of a grammar test can have an impact among test-takers. For instance
a test-taker can be better on multiple choices, or on essays, etc.
The purpose of grammar test is “to obtain and often provide information about how well a
student knows grammar in order to convey meaning in some situation where the target language
is used”
The main goal of a grammar test is to communicate in real life using target language situations.
One of the most relevant issue that we need to consider is “if we understand both the nature of
grammatical ability and the nature of the test task we use, we will able to account for the effect
of method on how we interpret scores on grammar tests”. The idea is to consider individual
characteristic of the tasks and the procedure for designing and developing tasks and also test
purposes. The target language use domain and the target language use tasks is an essential
preliminary step to the specification of test tasks is that we understand as grammatical ability.
If you want to develop grammar assessments you need “articulate the purpose(s) of the test,
consider the constructs and identify the situational domain(s) in which we would like to make
inferences about the test taker’s grammatical ability”. Constructs definition is understood as the
evidence can be gathered by means of the tasks and then scored which would be used to provide
diagnostic information (identify areas of further instructions) as well as achievement information
(determining the degree to which students has mastered the course material).
Other relevant idea is consider what do we mean by task? According different authors “task
could be referred to any activity that requires students to do something for the intent purpose
of learning the target language and it involves a linguistic or nonlinguistic response to input”
while according Loschky and Bley Vroman (1993) said that there are three types of grammar to
task relationships task naturalness, task utility and task essentialness; nevertheless, what about
communicative tasks? Rea Dickins (1991) said that these kinds of tasks should provide a realistic
situation in which test takers need to exchange information in order to complete the task.
Some characteristics of grammatical test tasks should be focus on “to provide as useful a

3. measurement as possible of students` grammatical ability it is necessary to design test tasks
in which the variability of students`scores is attributed to the differences in their grammatical
ability and not to controlled or irrelevant variability resulting from types of tasks or quality of
the tasks that teachers have put on the test” according Bachman and Palmer Framework there
are aspects describe these characteristics for example first the setting which include physical
characteristics, the participants and the time of the task, second the test rubrics which include
instructions, the overall structure of the test, the time allotment and the method used to score the
response is to say the overall test instructions make explicit the purpose of the overall test and
the area (s) of language ability being measured and so on, third the input or the stimulus which
is the part of the task that test takers must process in order to answer the question and has critical
features of performance in all test and TLU task, fourth the expected response which are in terms
of the format and language and also it can vary according to channel, form and vehicle and fifth
the relationship between the input and response which consider in examining how tasks impact
performance is seen in how characteristics of the input can interact with characteristics of the
response. We can find different types of grammar test such as multiple choice error identification
task, the matching task, the discrimination task, the noticing task, the gap filling task, the sort
answer task, the dialogue completion task and others.

4. CHAPTER 8
The “Learning-oriented assessment of grammar” was born in order to make grammar
tests more consistent with classroom goals, curriculum and instructions. The main idea of this
approach is promote “further learning” from the initial stages of test design.
In order to implement this approach, firstly, teachers need to clarify three aspects: 1)
whom we are doing the assessment for, 2) why assessment information in needed and 3) what
kind of information is needed. Then they have to specify the assessment purpose. Secondly, the
previous aspects will influence in the type of task that may be used and in the construct
definition (simple/complex). A simple construct could be that students had to complete a text
with verbs in past, for example. A complex construct involves the reflection of the students
about, for instance, why an event happened. Thirdly, to transform the implicit grammar in
explicit grammar. One way is to expose students with real time task in order to measure their
grammar capacity. The idea of these real tasks is that students apply the implicit grammar rules
they know explicitly in a real situation.
In order to operationalized learning-oriented teachers have to develop test specifications
which are really necessary. Besides, to collect information teachers can use different methods
such as conventional quizzes and tests containing selected-response, etc. Another way to collect
information is by extended production tasks: such as chats, recasts (re-creation), simulations,
different types of project work , observation and reflection.
Image a teacher that want to measure “modal verbs” using a detective case. The students
have to make predictions about the case; however, to operationalized learning-oriented in
classroom teachers need to modify the time, or the participants of the task. Students can perform
in group while the teacher is moving around observing or audio/videotaped them. Also teachers
have to modify the scoring method to accommodate different learning oriented goals. Maybe
after the performance students can evaluate themselves or a classmate based on the recorder. Or
teacher can evaluate the performance. Maybe teacher can provide written comments instead of

5. a score at all.. This would be a good possibility for feedback to know the degree of interference
of the L1 (mother tongue) of each students. The learning-oriented assessment wants students
can discover by themselves (positive or negative evidence). Considering that feedback is quite
important in this approach teacher can use it to show students how to improve and how to
promote a further learning. Also students develop the capacity of assess themselves or a partner
using rating scales and a set of guiding questions (Eg. My partner and I did a good job on this
task)
In addition, there are two common ways to collect information on grammatical ability:
1) Observation which is a natural part of every class and which can be done using, for example,
an anecdotal record. 2) A checklist: To record presence or absence of features in the construct
under observation. Nonetheless, there is another way to collect information 3) Reflection, in
time or over a period of time. It is useful to assess students feelings or attitudes towards learning
grammar (student journal, learning log)
Teacher can present the assessment result: with feedback (individually on further learning
in written comments, scoring or both) in the form of a single overall test score, a score for each
test component, scores reference to a rubric, a narrative summary of teacher observations or a
profile of scores showing development over time
Finally, is important to point out that to implement learning-oriented assessment of
grammar teachers not only have to consider the task design and operationalization, but also they
have to consider the acquisition of grammar and when in the lesson the grammatical aspects are
best assessed. if tt occurs in the input processing (when they learn grammar by instructions)
or if it occurs in the output processing (when they produce something using grammar) Teacher
have be aware of these processes in order to make the learning-oriented assessment of grammar a
complete success.