Abstract
The increased multilingualism in our society calls for more fair and refined methods for assessing L2 acquisition and for comparing L2 speakers’ competence with the control L1 . Professionals working with pre-schoolers and first and second graders deplore current testing methods (mainly based on some form of picture selection task) as not being an adequate tool for a reliable measure of children’s proficiency. A survey with 100 school teachers reveals that the main points of criticism are that the tested items are outdated, unclear and often culture-dependent. Furthermore, the selection format is problematic and items are tested out of their natural context. But most importantly, the task itself appears to fail in providing a true measure of the subject’s L2 competence.
In this talk we present our current work in developing a new test for assessing vocabulary comprehension in Dutch (NWO-Alfa Meerwaarde project in collaboration with Boom Uitgevers Amsterdam). The test is based on the Coloring Book, a new method for assessing language comprehension (Pinto & Zuckerman 2015; Zuckerman et al. in press).
The Coloring Book method is a ‘coloring task’ that offers an alternative for the picture selection method. Subjects are presented with a coloring page that depicts various items. They hear or read a sentence that seems to contain only instructions about how to color the page – “A blue monkey is being scratched by a green monkey”. By coloring various objects in the page, subjects reveal their choices and interpretations in a natural way and without being aware of doing so.
The coloring method has been shown to unlock better performance than the PST with grammatical constructions. The current project aims at using it to improve vocabulary testing: the child sees a coloring page with multiple items - for example, a classroom setting - and is asked to color them according to the given instructions (e.g. “the door is red”). By performing this coloring task the child reveals his/her vocabulary knowledge without having to perform an explicit picture selection.
The Coloring Book method is implemented in a digital web application (developed together with the Digital Humanities Lab, Utrecht University) which allows subjects to view and color the pages on a tablet or iPad, making the testing more efficient, smooth and fun.
With the coloring method most of the above mentioned points of criticism are being answered: the items are tested in context (we also pay attention to the cultural context) and are easily recognized, the problematic selection process is avoided and the whole procedure feels more like a game than like a test. We believe this test will improve the accuracy in measuring L1 and L2 vocabulary competence.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2016 |
Event | Anela Voorjaarsstudiedag - Utrecht, Netherlands Duration: 1 Jul 2016 → 1 Jul 2016 |
Conference
Conference | Anela Voorjaarsstudiedag |
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Country/Territory | Netherlands |
City | Utrecht |
Period | 1/07/16 → 1/07/16 |
Keywords
- language assessment, Coloring Book method, vocabulary assessment, child L2