Content introduction chapter role, culture of control in teaching a foreign language

3.2 The use of test methods in teaching reading texts of various functional styles in high school

In accordance with the theoretical provisions developed recently in the Soviet methodology, reading should be taught as a communicative process, i.e. the process of extracting the information contained in the text. In the learning process, it is customary to distinguish three communicative types of reading - learning, introductory and viewing - and correlate them with the corresponding functional styles.

The artistic functional style, the purpose of which is to provide an emotional and intellectual impact on the reader, assumes a socio-political style that is characteristic mainly of newspapers, magazines and sets a different requirement for understanding, namely, the rapid receipt of up-to-date information about events in your country and abroad, allows you to use viewing reading.Introductory reading guarantees a sufficient measure of understanding of popular science style texts.
The changed learning conditions require the teacher to use more effective techniques that would allow students to check the formation of reading skills, i.e. the ability to extract semantic information from the text sufficiently fully and deeply. The search for such methods led researchers to use tests.
The specifics of the tests are as follows:
first of all, the tests help to focus on extracting information with the necessary completeness and depth; stimulating the intellectual activity of students, the test requires minimal use of productive forms;
the test is a good adaptation tool, since the test material itself serves as reinforcement; facilitating and speeding up understanding, the test makes it possible to make great demands on the volume of reading. Therefore, after working with the tests for two quarters (senior classes), in the third quarter, students will be able to read texts without tests at the speed they have acquired. All this gives the right to talk about the great learning effect of the test methodology.
To control comprehension in the process of reading, it is advisable to use as the most adequate selective multiple choice tests in the following varieties:
a) choosing the correct answer to the question;
b) completion of the statement started on the basis of the proposed theses;
c) arrangement in order, grouping of facts;
d) cross-selection, establishment of correspondences;
e) deletion of specially inserted extra words;
It is important that the functional style and the type of reading associated with it affect the number of test tasks; more of them are required for studying reading than for viewing and familiarization. There is also a qualitative difference in the tests. It lies in the essence of the proposed alternatives, the nature of which should change depending on the functional style and the type of reading associated with it.
Tests to control the understanding of fragments of works of art that are the subject of a student's reading should contain alternatives concerning the actual content, style of the work, and ideological intent. When testing popular science texts, you should use alternatives aimed at identifying the actual content and the main idea. Socio-political texts, which are the subject of viewing reading, suggest tests with alternatives of a generalized nature only. This is the structure and content of the 23 tests developed by us for the current educational and methodological kits in English for grades IX-X of secondary school (authors A.P. Starkov, R.R. Dixon).
The use of the test methodology involves mandatory instruction of students regarding the technique of execution. This primarily applies to those types of test tasks that students have not yet met.
The general rules that students should follow are as follows:
Answers to test tasks should be written on a specially attached to the test sheet "Answer Sheet".
Before writing down the answer, it is necessary to carefully read the task, think about the alternatives proposed to it and write down the letter of the correct answer to a specific task.
The answer must be written carefully, corrections are not allowed. You should check the correctness of your answers by the key (which is issued immediately after the test). As for the wording of the test tasks, some of them are given in their native language. At the same time, we are guided by the following principle: the test is a means of revealing understanding and therefore should be made as easy as possible. However, stereotypical cliches, frequently repeated tasks and alternatives consisting of an active dictionary are given in a foreign language [3, pp.89-90].
How is the work with tests distributed between classroom and homework? There can be no strict recommendations here. However, it is clear that large-volume texts (popular science and fiction) should be given at home, and only check understanding in the classroom.
Small notes of a socio-political nature, small texts and fragments of popular science and fiction can be read in the classroom. At the beginning of working with tests, much attention should be paid to them in the classroom in order to teach students to the technique of performance; then the proportion of work with tests will be transferred to homework.
An important consideration when working on a test is the development and maintenance of student motivation. For this purpose, an assessment of their activities serves, which can be carried out on the basis of a specially developed scale of assessments, taking into account the complexity of the tasks. As a result, high school students can clearly see their own progress.
The performance of a multiple choice test task to control the understanding of the actual content of the text is estimated at 1 point.
The performance of a task aimed at the style or definition of a generalized idea of the work (implicit information) is estimated at 2 points.
In the tests for filling in the missing words (close procedure), each correctly restored word is estimated at 0.5 points.
In the tests for the placement of plan items, each item of the plan, correctly placed in its place, is evaluated by 0.5 points.
In the matching type test, each correctly correlated task is also rated 0.5 points if it controls the understanding of explicit information; the understanding of implicit information is rated 1 point.
So, let's calculate the total number of points by which the students' performance of the test for the text "One Friday Morning" should be evaluated. There are 8 test tasks for the text in total. Tasks 1-3 of them are aimed at identifying explicit information. Therefore, the correct execution of each of them will total 3 points. The correct execution of task 5 for the placement of plan items (there are 6 of them) is estimated at 3 points. Tasks 4, 6, 8 are aimed at identifying subtext information. Therefore, the correct execution of them will be evaluated at 2 points each (total 6 points), and task 7 - at 2 points. In total, the total number of points for evaluating the performance of this test is 14 points.
The overall score for completing the test is displayed as follows:
5 - over 90% of completed tasks;
4 - from 70 to 90% of completed tasks;
3 - from 50 to 70%;
2 - less than 50%
Depending on the nature of the test, various tasks can be set, on which the completeness and depth of information extraction depends.