In everyday reading situations, readers have a purpose for reading before they start. That is, they know what comprehension questions they are going to need to answer before they begin reading. To make reading assessment in the language classroom more like reading outside of the classroom, therefore, allow students to review the comprehension questions before they begin to read the test passage.
Finally, when the purpose for reading is enjoyment, comprehension questions are beside the point. As a more authentic form of assessment, have students talk or write about why they found the text enjoyable and interesting (or not).
Authentic Assessment
In order to provide authentic assessment of students' reading proficiency, a post-listening activity must reflect the real-life uses to which students might put information they have gained through reading.
• It must have a purpose other than assessment
• It must require students to demonstrate their level of reading comprehension by completing some task
To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the type of response that reading a particular selection would elicit in a non-classroom situation. For example, after reading a weather report, one might decide what to wear the next day; after reading a set of instructions, one might repeat them to someone else; after reading a short story, one might discuss the story line with friends.
Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate post-reading tasks. You can then develop a checklist or rubric that will allow you to evaluate each student's comprehension of specific parts of the text. See Assessing Learning for more on checklists and rubrics.
Developing classroom activities a teacher should always remember:
- students’ comprehension may increase if they are trained to use strategies such as activation of background knowledge and guessing;
- students need pre-reading activities that prepare them for the comprehension tasks;
- text appropriateness should be judged on the basis of text quality, interest level, and learners’ needs;
- authentic materials provide an effective means for presenting real language integrating culture, and heightening comprehension;
- vocabulary must be connected to text structure, student interest, and background knowledge in order to aid retention and recall;
- comprehension assessment should engage the learner in a hierarchy of procedures through which he or she interacts with the text.
Conclusion
Reading is an activity with a purpose. A person may read in order to gain information or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a writer's ideas or writing style. The purpose for reading also determines the appropriate approach to reading comprehension. Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is.
Reading comprehension is thus much more than decoding. Reading comprehension results when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type of text, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.
By raising students' awareness of reading as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly teaching reading strategies, instructors help their students develop both the ability and the confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way they give their students the foundation for communicative competence in the new language.
Reading comprehension teaching aims at-
1. To let better grasping of the context, sequence and the characters narrated in text.
2. Certain parts of the text can confuse readers. Reading comprehension skills works on this aspect to get the clear idea of the meaning of the text.
3. Helps to create the questionnaire based on the text about its theme or idea. It often helps in better understanding of the said paragraph.
4. It helps to link the event of narration with our previous experiences and predict the next probable event in the course based on the information given in the narration.
Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading. However, there are a number of factors which may interfere with an individual's ability to comprehend text material.
The most common single obstacle to text comprehension is decoding insufficiency. Simply put, if the student cannot decode accurately and automatically, comprehension will be compromised.
– When the student cannot «apprehend» or decode the word, meaning cannot be extracted.
– When the student cannot decode fluently and automatically, reading is slow and laborious and memory for read material is poor.
– When the student cannot decode and is taught to rely on «context cues» or to «guess» at words, comprehension is compromised.
Developing classroom activities a teacher should always remember:
- students’ comprehension may increase if they are trained to use strategies such as activation of background knowledge and guessing;
- students need pre-reading activities that prepare them for the comprehension tasks;
- text appropriateness should be judged on the basis of text quality, interest level, and learners’ needs;
- authentic materials provide an effective means for presenting real language integrating culture, and heightening comprehension;
- vocabulary must be connected to text structure, student interest, and background knowledge in order to aid retention and recall;
- comprehension assessment should engage the learner in a hierarchy of procedures through which he or she interacts with the text.
Bibliography
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