Looking Afresh At Evaluation
The oral dictation, with no repetition, of sentences of increasing length will verify 1
that the student can take in a number of words,
2 hold them in the order received, 3 evoke them again in the same order, and 4 transmute these words into the proper written sequences by involving imagery, its translation into the muscular orders that guide the marks made by the writing tool on the paper, a check by the eye to see that what has been written is what was required. E2 therefore is a test of mastery in detail of the functionings involved in reading up to the level of an encounter with all the sounds of English. If the test is not concerned with the choice of vocabulary there are no grounds for being concerned with whether or not students comprehend what they read. But if the vocabulary has been screened to cover the many thousands of words of the spoken language of the testees then it is fair to see to what extent the written language is already an equivalent system to the spoken one. We must therefore consider how to be fair to the students and how to be sure that comprehension is being tested and nothing else. There are obviously two comprehensions: that used by people in their oral intercourse and covering all sorts of subjects of everyday life, mostly understood by most people, and the one that is involved in scanning a written text. Since intonation, the presence of voices, generally makes the first quite easy, we can test comprehension of a text that is read aloud with respect for the phrasing and the melody of English. A further test can start with silent reading of a text that would yield its meaning or meanings at once if read aloud, and treat it in the same way as the first; and a third test would require testees to study a text silently and answer questions about it in writing. Similar treatments will be used in E3 for R3 with the one difference that all the irregularities of spelling will be allowed in the presented texts.
23