Thrid entry assessment

1. Lorena Peña Flórez
ASSESSING READING
Reading is the tool that let people become cultured and wise. Although, people are
aware of the huge amount of benefits reading gives us, they still wasting our time doing
silly things in our free time. For instance, we prefer to spend two or three hour watching
TV than reading an interesting article or book. The most interesting fact is that reading
skill is presented either implicit or explicit in each aspect of our life as a way of conveying
meaning. Unfortunately, most people do it just as a requirement.
It is so common to hear students saying that they read their papers just because it is
a requirement to develop a task, to approve a test or pass the subject, but not necessarily
because they enjoy it. Reading skill is considered the most essential one for becoming
successful in the educational environment. As the other skills (writing, speaking and
listening) to master reading takes time because it is a practice in which the chief goal of a
reader is to comprehend what is intended to read, it means going deeper from just decoding
words or images.
As well as the other skills, teachers have the responsibility to assess it. As it was
mentioned in the book1 reading is carried out though inference. It means to conclude some
ideas based on reasoning, that is the reason why become a fluent reader is not as easier as it
seems. In other words, readers have to set up a variety of strategies that will help them to
achieve that goal.
When designing reading tests teachers must take into account the types of reading
(perceptive, selective, interactive and extensive) in order to determine what process bottomup or top-down the reader have to use or if they have to mix both processes. Reader’s
performance depends directly from how much learners have mastered both the microkills
and macroskills.
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LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT: Principles and Classroom Practices.

2. To conclude, teachers have to still working hard to promote reading in classroom
setting as well outside it, in order to make people become aware of how life could be better
if we were able to comprehend what we are trying to decode. Besides, assessing reading it
is really valuable because in this way teachers can help learner to improve all the skills due
to the fact that all are a whole complementary unit.
Image taken from: http://www.busykidshappymom.org/reading-quote-printable/

3. References
Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching. (4 ed.). New York:
Pearson ESL.
http://www.busykidshappymom.org/reading-quote-printable/