Two issues in assessment of high school students performance in english

THANH HOA Department of Education and

Training

TRAN PHU High School


EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE
THEME: Two Issues in Assessment of High School
Student Performance in English

Researcher: Dau Thi Diep
Foreign Language Group
Tran Phu High School

THANH HOA MAY 2016

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
A) Problem Area in Assessment
B) A Review of Relevant Literature
B1) Assessing Grammar Knowledge
B2) Assessing Oral Skills
C) Recommendations for The Current Case
Conclusion
References

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Introduction
The issues of teaching English have widely discussed and researched since
English now becomes an international tool for communicating among people around
the world, even among people in the same community. Individuals with a variety of
professionals, age, ethnics and purposes try hard not only to achieve a certain level of
but also to get a required certificate of English. In other words, “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”
(McNamara, 2000, p.4). Hence, the issues of testing one’s ability of English have
attracted great attention of language experts. From the point of view of an English
educator, the author of this paper aims to discuss two issues in assessment of high
school student performance in English, specifically which of the twelfth grade
students. Then, in an attempt to find best solutions to the involving case, the author
reviews relevant literature, comparing various possible answers. The last part of this
paper is devoted to identifying the most suitable solution to the two mentioned
problems, detailing specific recommendations.
A) Problem Area in Assessment
As you can find a typical test attached with this paper, tests during the twelfth
school year, even in other school years, are mainly aimed to measure students’ ability
of grammar. However, the required level of grammar is quite high. It is obviously that
exceptions of grammar rules are tested for often. One can claim that such a high level
is unnecessary and causes many problems for students and relevant educators as well.
Learners and teachers spend a lot of valuable time practicing all that grammar stuff
even though it is clear to them that what they are struggling for is hardly ever applied
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in communication. Making students pay much attention to grammar also affects their
later process of learning English. They certainly become less fluent, even less
confident once they are too conscious of grammar rules. This negative effect is
obviously shown in reality as at the end of a seven-year high school course students
are rarely able to communicate in ordinary conversations in English.
The lack of balance of measurement among four macro skills is another
problem area in assessment that this paper aims to cover. Oral and aural skills are
completely neglected during the period of seven years of learning English at high
school. Therefore, no one can find even a single part which is devoted to testing
speaking or listening skills in any out of twelve tests in the twelfth grade. Meanwhile,
speaking ability is a very key indicator of one’s English competence. Also, listening
skill receives very little attention. Hence, one can claim that measuring listening and
speaking skills is absent from the assessment of student performance. Practicing all
four skills in English is officially required in almost English courses in high school so
it is necessary that aural and oral skills receive much more attention in language
testing.

B) A Review of Relevant Literature
B1) Assessing grammar knowledge
Penny Ur (1996, p.75) over-simply defines grammar as “the way words are put
together to make correct sentences”. However, one can “apply the term ‘grammatical’
to units smaller than sentences” (Ur, 1996, p.75) as grammar is “the rules in a
language for changing the form of the words and joining them into sentences”
according to Oxford advanced learners’ dictionary, seventh edition. Grammatical
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competence “will be understood to include knowledge of lexical items and of rules of

morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics and phonology” (McNamara,
2000, p.93). The question on the adequate level of grammar which should be
achieved by high school students has been an issue of debate for many years. Some
argue that the superficial knowledge of grammar can make no significant contribution
towards achieving the communicative aim. Hence, there is no point in setting the
target grammatical level for high school students unnecessarily high. In contrast, one
may fear that “a lack of grammatical knowledge can severely limit what is
understood or produced in communication” (Purpura, 2004, p.4). In reality, each
educational institution requires a certain grammatical level of their learners. Thus, it
is the teacher’s responsibility for guiding students to acquire the grammar necessary
and to meet the grammatical requirement of that teaching situation. High school
students in this case demonstrate their grammar ability only through language tests
designed by their own teachers. Arthur Hughes (2003) has stated that all we would be
looking for is some general indication of the adequacy of the student’s grammar
knowledge so “the test should be guide do-able; not too difficult” (Ur, 1996, p.42).
Moreover, the grammar part of the test must provide more context than only single
sentences. Unfortunately, the achievement test discussed here uses a list of single
sentences to check the grammar knowledge. Besides traditional tests, there are a
variety of alternative assessments like class observation, portfolio or class activities
which can be applied for the author’s teaching situation. These alternative ones
require students to be able to produce grammatical responses and apply grammar to
some communicative purpose (Purpura, 2004, p.2). In other words, assessments of

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grammar should require students to demonstrate not only their memory capacity of
grammar forms but also their language ability of understanding and applying them.

B2) Assessing oral skills

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Hughes (2003) believes that language abilities are not easy to measure and it
has been widely recognized that speaking is the most difficult skill to assess. It is
absolutely true to the author’s teaching situation. In reviewing earlier work, this paper
concludes that testing speaking skill consists of the testing of pronunciation, spoken
grammar, spoken vocabulary, and even sociolinguistic applications of speech. Hughes
(2003) claims that the most common format for assessing speaking ability is the
interview. Besides, interaction with fellow candidates and responses to audio- or
video-recordings are also widely applied for testing oral skills. However, “a frequent
problem for teachers is when there are so many learners in one class that it seems to
make it unrealistic to assess speaking” (Scrivener). The teachers who designed the
discussed test are also in that situation. Their class size generally ranges from thirty to
fifty and each class lasts forty-five minutes per time so it is unlikely possible to assess
all students’ performance at a time. In this case, this assessment should be done
through classroom activities, group presentations during class periods of the school
year. An underlying problem in testing speaking in this educational case is its scorer
reliability. As Mead and Rubin (1985) confirm that “a major aspect of any rating
system is rater objectivity: Is the rater applying the scoring criteria accurately and
consistently to all students across time? The reliability of raters should be established
during their training and checked during administration or scoring of the assessment”.
In some cases, it would be more reliable if students’ performance is double rated. Not
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only marking learners’ performance but the teacher should provide them with a grid
containing a list of specific criteria with comments. As Hughes (2003) concludes that
the accurate measurement of oral ability is not easy and it takes considerable time and

effort, including training, to obtain valid and reliable results.
C) Recommendations for the current case
It cannot be denied that grammar contributes an essential part to one’s
linguistic competence. However, the too much emphasis on the mastery of
grammatical structures may decreases students’ fluency. Thus, under the discussed
circumstance, the test designers should aim to a lower level of grammar which is
widely considered an adequate level for high school students. Specifically, exceptions
of grammar rules need to be tested with care and are used only to distinguish
outstanding individuals rather than to check ordinary students’ grammar ability. One
more thing to make this test authentic is that texts for checking grammar ability
should not be in isolated sentences but in a specific context. The teachers in charge of
designing tests should be in an emphasis on grammar meaning rather than on
accuracy of form. Therefore, the answer to the question whether grammar tests that
focus only on sentence level accuracy can be justified (Rea-Dickins, 2001) is
absolutely no. Moreover, the format for measuring students’ control of grammar
should be varied. It can be separately tested with multiple-choice questions, matching
or sentence transformation, etc. at a time and through writing tasks at other time, for
example. In short, more effort and investment should be put into designing tests,
especially into the grammar part.
In regard to speaking and listening skills, it is strongly advisable to include
their measurement sessions among tests, at least in one test, during the school year
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because “the motivating power of tests appears clear: learners who know they are
going to be tested on specific material next week will normally be more motivated to
study it carefully than if they had simply been told to learn it” (Ur, 1996, p.279).
Under the author’s educational situation, teachers may encounter difficulties in
measuring these skills but it is worth great effort to manage them. The author of this

paper is in favor of covering the measurement of the oral skill through class activities
and observation such as pair work, group work or group discussion. In terms of the
aural skills, they can be included in a fifteen-minute test. At the early stage of the
semester, students should be noticed that their speaking and listening skills will be
assessed during the class time and the criteria that the teacher would focus on.
Moreover, the teachers should give their learners comments on their oral performance
in parallel with a specific score after the testing progress comes to end. In short,
although speaking ability is the most difficult one to measure, “where there’s a will,
there’s a way”.

Conclusion
In this paper, the author has identified two issues in assessment relevant to her
own teaching situation, reviewing related literature and finally detailing specific
recommendations. It should be repeatedly noticed that grammar tests should be guide
do-able; not too difficult and testing speaking and listening skills at least once during
the school year is essentially done. Also, various alternative assessment ways which
are more effective than the traditional tests are already presented in the paper. It
would be ideal if teachers could combine those assessing methods. The testing issue
obviously plays a vital part in test-takers’ learning process, especially in which of
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high school students. Thus it is vital that test designers are aware of making assessing
student performance more valid and reliable.

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References:
Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. England: Pearson
Education Limited.

Hughes, A. (2003). Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Mead, Nancy A. & Rubin, Donald L. (1985). Assessing Listening and Speaking
Skills. Eric Digest. Retrieved 26 May 2011, from
/>McNamara, T. (2000). Language Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Purpura, J. E. (2004). Assessing Grammar. In Anderson, J. C. & Bachman, L. F.
(Eds.), Cambridge Language Assessment series. Cambridge University Press.
Rea-Dickins, P. (2001). Fossilization or evolution: The Case of Grammar Testing. In
Elder, C., Brown, A., Grove, E., Hill, K. … O’Loughlin, K. (Eds.), Studies in
Language Testing 11: Experimenting with Uncertainty: Essays in Honour of
Alan Davies (pp. 22-32). Great Britain: Cambridge University Press.
Scrivener, J. One Stop English: Skills: Assessing Speaking Skills. Retrieved 26 May
2011, from />Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

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SỞ GD & ĐT THANH HOA
THPT TRAN PHU
2016

KIỂM TRA HỌC KỲ II LỚP 12, NĂM HỌC 2015Môn: ANH VĂN
Thời gian làm bài: 90 phút, không kể thời gian giao đề
(Đề thi có 06 trang)
Mã đề thi AV102

Họ, tên thí sinh: ……………………………………
Số báo danh: ……………………………………….
PHẦN TRẮC NGHIỆM: TỪ QUESTION 1 ĐẾN QUESTION 64 ( 8 điểm )

Mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer
to each of the following questions from 1 to 25.
Question 1: A: “ Do you have copy of The Last Leaf ?”
B: “ You are …….. luck. I have just one copy left.”
A. by
B. in
C. of
D. at
Question 2: Since the flood the number of homeless people…………..dramatically.
A. are increasing B. had increased
C. increase
D. has increased
Question 3: Can you make yourself………. In French ?
A. understood
B. understand
C. to understand
D. understanding
Question 4: Today many species of plant and animal are in……….. of extinction.
A. danger
B. endangered
C. endanger
D. dangerous
Question 5: If your current rate of deforestation continues, the world’s
rainforests………..within 100 years.
A. would vanish
B. vanish
C. will vanish
D. would have vanished
Question 6: At first she was trained to be……….scriptwriter, but later she worked
as……..secretary.

A. the/a
B. a/a
C. the/the
D. a/the
Question 7: “ Don’t look so worried! You should take the leader’s comment
with………”
A. a teaspoon of salt B. a cup of salt C. a dose of salt
D. a pinch of salt
Question 8: If I…………an astronaut traveling in a cabin, I’d not be annoyed by the
weightlessness.
A. am
B. be
C. will be
D. were
Question 9: Our project was successful………..its practicality.
A. in terms of
B. with a view to
C. regardless
D. on behalf of
Question 10: Of the two new students, one is friendly and………….
A. the others are not
B. the other is not
C. another is un friendly
D.other lacks friendliness
Question 11: There is one person to…………T owe more than I can say.
A. whom
B. who
C. that
D. whose
Question 12: After a good night’s sleep I woke up feeling as fresh as……….. and

eager to start a new day.
A. a fruit
B. a daisy
C. a flower
D. a maiden
Question 13: Mary is sixteen years old. She is……….. young to get married.
10


A. too
B. so
C. such
D. enough
Question 14: ………… is the existence of a large number of different kinds of
animals and plants which make a balanced environment.
A. Extinction
B. Biodiversity
C. Habitat
D. Conservation
Question 15: Since we………….to working so hard, can we rest for a while?
A. don’t used
B. aren’t used
C. don’t use
D. not use
Question 16: - Kate: “ How lovely your cats are!”
- David:
“…………………….”
A. Really? They are
B. Thank you, it is nice of you to say so
C. Can you say it again?

D. I love them, too.
Question 17: Peter was ejected after committing five personal…………. In water
sport game yesterday.
A. mistakes
B. faults
C. fouls
D. errors
Question 18: Toxic chemicals in the air and land have driven many species to
the………..of extinction.
A. tip
B. edge
C. verge
D. border
Question 19: She ran…………an interesting article about fashion while she was
reading the newspaper.
A. after
B. cross
C. away
D. out
Question 20: It’s essential that every student…………. All the lectures.
A. attends
B. attend
C. has attended
D. attended
Question 21: It’s secret. You…………let anyone know about it.
A. mustn’t
B. needn’t
C. mightn’t
D. may not
Question 22: When Tet holiday comes, Vietnamese people often feel inclined

to………. Their houses.
A. do up
B. do in
C. do through
D. do over
Question 23: - Anne: “ Make youself at home”
- John: “ …………………..”
A. Thanks! Same to you
B. That’s very kind. Thank you
C. Not at all. Don’t mention it
D. Yes, can I help you?
Question 24: He managed to keep his job………….the manager had threatened to
sack him.
A. therefore
B. although
C. unless
D. despite
Question 25: It was announced that neither the passengers nor the driver…………in
the crash.
A. are injured
B. was injured
C. were injured
D. have been injured
Mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word that
differs from pronunciation in each of the following questions from 26 to 27.
Question 26: A. leaves
B. brings
C. looks
D. plays
Question 27: A. watched

B. promoted
C. invited
D. decided
Mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word that
differs from the rest in the position of the main stress in each of the following
questions from 28 to 30.
Question 28: A. require
B. consist
C. achieve
D. system
Question 29: A. intervention B. necessary
C. intellectual
D. productivity
Question 30: A. intensity
B. accurate
C. erosion
D. miraculous

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Mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word or phrase
that is CLOSEST in meaning to the underlined part in each of the following
questions from 31 to 32.
Question 31: We went away on holiday last week, but it rained day in day out.
A. every single day
B. every other day
C. every second day
D. every two days
Question 32: We can use either verbal or non-verbal forms of communication.

A. using gesture
B. using speech
C. using verbs
D. using facial expressions
Mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word or phrase
that is OPPOSITE in meaning to the underlined part in each of the following
questions from 33 to 34.
Question 33: Thousands are going starving because of the failure of this year’s
harvest.
A. hungry
B. rich
C. poor
D. full
Question 34: There is growing concern about the way man has destroyed the
environment.
A. ease
B. attraction
C. consideration
D. speculation
Mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet to show the underlined part
that needs correction from 35 to 39.
Question 35: Men and women in the Pea Corps work with people in the developing
A
countries to help them improving their living conditions.
B
C
D
Question 36: Although not widely sold, that book is considered to be best book on the
A
B

C
D
subject.
Question 37: Because his sickness, he didn’t take part in the English competition held
A
B
C
D
last Sunday.
Question 38: I found my new contact lenses strangely at first, but I got used to them
A
B
C
in the end.
D
Question 39: Dreaming, like all other mental processes, it is a product of the brain
A
B
C
and its activity.
D
Read the following passage and mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet
to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions from 40 to 49.
Acid rain will not be an easy problem (36) …………. . As more and more
countries become (37) …………. , there will be more and more competition for
12


petroleum for cars, home heating, and indusrty, while (38) ……………… petroleum
contributes greatly (39)……………. acid rain, it is less polluted than coal.

Unfortunately petroleum is more (40) ……………. than coal and no one knows
exactly (41) …………. petroleum is left. Therefore, there will be a pressure to burn
coal for energy. Coal is a (42) …………… dirtier energy source than petroleum.
Since we already know how (43) …………. acid rain is, it is important (44)
…………… we increase our efforts to find a (45) ………………. source of energy as
quickly as possible, so that we can advoid further environmental damage.
Question 40: A. solve
B. to solve
C. solved
D. solving
Question 41: A. industry B. industrial
C. industrialize
D. industrialized
Question 42: A. firing
B. shooting
C. burning
D. cooking
Question 43: A. to
B. for
C. at
D. with
Question 44: A. expensive
B. cheap
C. clean
D. dirty
Question 45: A. how many
B. how much
C. how far
D. how long
Question 46: A. so

B. many
C. lot
D. much
Question 47: A. destroy B. destroyed
C. destruction
D. destructive
Question 48: A. that
B. if
C. whether
D. which
Question 49: A. polluted B. polluting
C. non- polluting D. unpolluting
Read the following passage and mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet
to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions from 50 to 54.
Walt Whitman, born in New York in 1819, was one of America’s unusual
literary figures. An individualist, he rambled through the country seeing people and
places, and making them his own. His experiences in earning a living were varied: at
times he was a printer, a teacher, a carpenter, a nurse and a newspaper editor. He was
a big-hearted man, open and accepting. He spent a lot of his time caring for the
wounded during the Civil War. Though he lived in the city, he often spent time in the
country, developing his strong sense of nature, which carried through his poems. In
1855, he collected the verses he had written, and published them in one thin volume,
“Leaves of Grass”, a book which he revised and was generally ignored by other
poets, probably because his verse forms were not traditional. He had felt that it was
necessary to achieve a new poetic form in order to communicate his views. His
reputation didn’t grow until after his death, and it reached a high point in the 1920s.
Since then, Whitman’s style has greatly influenced modern poets.
Question 50: The best title for this passage is ……............
A. Leaves of Grass
B. A Country Man

C. Walt Whitman
D. A New Form of Poetry
Question 51: Whitman’s big-heartedness is shown by his ……….......
A. visiting the country
B. being an individualist
C. rewriting “Leaves of Grass”
D. caring for the wounded
Question 52: It can be understood from the passage that during Whitman’s lifetime,
probably other poets ……..
A. accepted him
B. praised him
C. laughed at him
D. communicated with him
Question 53: Probably, Whitman was ignored because he ………
A. wrote a new form
B. walked through the countryside
C. published his poems
D. rewrote his book
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Question 54: The word “rambled” in line 2 is most similar to the meaning of ………
A. stopped briefly B. walked slowly C. traveled quicklyD. marched excitedly
Read the following passage and mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet
to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions from 55 to 64.
A pilot cannot fly by sight alone. In many conditions, such as flying at night
and landing in dense fog, a pilot must use radar, an alternative way of navigating.
Since human eyes are not very good at determining speeds of approaching objects,
radar can show a pilot how fast nearby planes are moving. The basic principle of
radar is exemplified by what happens when one shouts in a cave. The echo of the

sounds against the walls helps a person determine the size of the cave. With radar,
however, the waves are radio waves instead of sound waves. Radio waves travel at
the speed of light, about 300,000 kilometers in one second. A radar set sends out a
short burst of radio waves. Then it receives the echoes produced when the waves
bounce off objects. By determining the time it takes for the echoes to return to the
radar set, a trained technician can determine the distance between the radar set and
other objects. The word “radar”, in fact, gets its name from the term “radio detection
and ranging”. “Ranging” is the term for detection of the distance between an object
and the radar set. Besides being of critical importance to pilots, radar is essential for
air traffic control, tracking ships at sea, and for tracking weather systems and storms.
Question 55: What is the main topic of this passage?
A. The nature of radar.
B. History of radar.
C. Alternatives to radar.
D. Types of ranging.
Question 56: According to the passage, what can radar detect besides location of
objects?
A. Shape.
B. Size.
C. Speed.
D. Weight.
Question 57: The word “exemplified” in the passage can be replaced by _______.
A. “specified”
B. “resembled”
C. “illustrated”
D. “justified”
Question 58: The word “shouts” in the passage most closely means _______.
A. “exclaims”
B. “yells”
C. “shoots”

D. “whispers”
Question 59: Which of the following words best describes the tone of this passage?
A. argumentative B. explanatory
C. humorous
D. imaginative
Question 60: According to the passage, the distance between a radar set and an object
can be determined by _______.
A. the time it takes for a burst of radio waves to produce echoes when the waves
bounce off the object
B. the term “ranging” used for detection of the distance between an object and the
radar set
C. the time it takes for the radio waves to produce echoes and bounce off the object
D. the time it takes for the echoes produced by the radio waves to return to the
radar set
Question 61: Which type of waves does radar use?
A. tidal
B. sound
C. heat
D. radio
Question 62: The word “tracking” in the passage most closely means _______.
A. sending
B. searching for
C. ranging
D. repairing
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Question 63: Which of the following would most likely be the topic of the next
paragraph?
A. A history of flying.

B. Other uses of radar.
C. The technology used by pilots.
D. Uses of some technology.
Question 64: What might be inferred about radar?
A. It takes the place of a radio.
B. It has improved navigational safety.
C. It was developed from a study of sound waves.
D. It gave birth to the invention of the airplane.
II. PHẦN TỰ LUẬN ( 2 điểm )
A. Finish each of the following sentences in such a way that it means exactly the
same as the sentence before it.
Question 1. She started working in this school 5 years ago.
- I’ve................................................................................................................................
Question 2. Tom sai: “ let’s go out for a walk”
- Tom suggested...............................................................................................................
Question 3. Tom said that he hadn’t stolen the money.
- Tom denied....................................................................................................................
Question 4. We don’t study hard, so we don’t get good grades.
- If....................................................................................................................................
Question 5. People say that he was a businessman 5 years ago.
- He is………………………………………………………………………………
B. Write a paragraph about the ideal world in which you would like to live in the
year 2050. You should write at least 100 words.

Nga Son, May 2016
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