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Teacher Resources for ERLI
Guidelines for Making a Reading 3 Final or Diagnostic
- Exams must be production-based. What this means is that they can't have any M/C, T/F, fill-in-the-blank...type questions. Questions should require students to write their own answers. This could be in the form of a couple words, a sentence, or longer.
ex: Instead of...
- The reading has to be end-of-level appropriate in difficulty. Difficulty is determined by the length of the article, the complexity of the grammar, how common the vocabulary terms are, and the subject matter of the article.
[If you choose an article from the text book, make sure it's from the end of the book. You can also choose an article from the end of a book used in a previous semester.]
- The exam questions should cover all the outcomes for the level.
You will need to have...
- questions testing identifying both stated and implied main idea
- critical thinking [ making inferences, giving and supporting an opinion]
- comprehension questions/supporting detail
- vocab skills [definition + use]
- If you can't cover all the outcomes with a single reading, then you might want to use a short literary/story passage with questions that focus more on critical thinking and vocab skills, as well as a short academic passage with questions that focus more on main idea and comprehension/supporting details.
- The points should be mostly balanced between outcomes. This means that no single reading outcome makes up a disproportionate amount of the points on the exam. For example, it is common for new teachers to put too much emphasis on vocabulary type questions when making a reading exam.
Sample points spread:
- Stated main idea = 5 points
- Limited critical thinking = basic inference, prediction, opinion = 10 points
- Comprehension ques/Supporting details = 12 points
- Vocab skills = 10 points
- In choosing your reading passage(s) and writing your questions, make sure they fit into the time allotted for the exam.
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