1.
all skills and their components (listening discrimination, listening comprehension, pronunciation, oral expression, reading comprehension, spelling and graphic expression) should be tested;
2. one ability should be tested at a time;
3. questions cannot be ambiguous, and they should not permit guessing;
4. at least one example should be given before each type of question;
5. clear instructions must be given as to how the test is to be answered;
6. tests may cover only the materials previously presented and fixed.
Every examination is of the structure Instruction-Stimulus-Response. Instructions may be oral or graphic. The stimulus may be provided in the structure of actual situations, spoken words, pictures, and writing. The response may be oral, written, or it may involve behaviour.
II. TEACHING ENGLISH VOCABULARY AT PRIMARY SCHOOL IN THE LIGHT OF PERSONAL RESEARCH.
1. The description of the research. We can directly access the meanings of only the words we already know. The referents of new words can be verbally explained only in terms of old words. Either this can be done explicitly, by presenting their definitions, or implicitly, by setting them in a context of old words that effectively constrains their meanings.
The enduring effects of the vocabulary limitations of
students with diverse learning needs are becoming increasingly apparent. Nothing less that learning itself depends on language. Certainly, most of our formal education is acquired through language. Learning something new does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, new learning always builds on what the learner already knows. New learning is the process of forming novel combinations of familiar concepts. Learning, as a language-based activity, is fundamentally and profoundly dependent on vocabulary knowledge. Learners must have access to the meaning of words teachers, or their surrogates (e.g., other adults, books, films, etc.), use to guide them into contemplating known concepts in novel ways (i.e., to learn something new). With inadequate vocabulary knowledge, learners are being asked to develop novel combinations of known concepts with insufficient tools.
Research suggests that students can be taught the phonological awareness skills they need to become proficient readers. In addition, there is empirical support that students who begin school behind typical peers in important areas such as vocabulary and language development can master basic reading skills as quickly and as well as typical peers under optimal instructional conditions.
However, the primary difficulty with sustaining early gains in reading is the lack of adequate vocabulary to meet the broad academic demands that begin in the upper-elementary grades and continue throughout schooling. In contrast to phonological awareness and early reading achievement, no research evidence supports the contention that specific vocabulary development method or program can bridge the vocabulary gap that exists at the onset of schooling between groups of students with poor versus rich vocabularies, and which continues to widen throughout school and beyond.
It is necessary to distinguish between two contrasting ways of gauging the success of curricular and instructional programs designed to increase vocabulary development. On one hand, successful programs can be defined in an absolute sense by determining whether they lead to increases in vocabulary beyond what occurs during incidental learning opportunities, or because of other explicit attempts to increase word knowledge. Alternatively, successful programs can be defined in a relative sense by the extent to which they reduce the well-documented vocabulary gap between students with poor versus rich vocabularies.