Generating assessment items for my vocabulary diagnostic

I started on this earlier

• My outline is here.
• And the initial results from the profiling software are here.
• And the way that I generated some useable word lists is here.

What follows below is an outline of my final selection of words and the sample sentences that I used.

Everyday words

Includes words that are part of our everyday English. This may still include some less common words. Roughly equates to step 3 in the Vocabulary Progression in the Reading Strand.

Academic Words

Includes academic words or words that are part of the language of teaching and instruction. For example, this could include words from the Academic Word List (AWL), words relating to Bloom’s taxonomy, and other language used in an academic context or for task instructions. Roughly equates to step 4/5 in the Vocabulary Progression in the Reading Strand.

Specialised or technical words

Includes specialised or technical words and terms. For example, this could include trades-related vocabulary, terminology relating to a specific and narrow area of study, or words that would fall outside of the 2600 words covered by the first two thousand high frequency word lists (1K and 2K word lists) plus the AWL (off-list).

Vocabulary Diagnostic Snapshot Assessment for my text

I pared down my selection to 30 words from each band or word frequency level. Each of these needs a sentence.

If I had more time, I could lift the appropriate sentences from the original text and gap out (or partially gap out) the words that I’m testing.

However, since I’m in a rush, I’m just going to use already generated sample sentences from either Simple English Wikipedia or the Longman Dictionary of English online. These I also tend to edit for my own purposes as well.

Everyday

1. arguing: The children were arguing over which TV programme to watch.
2. check: You must check the evidence against other sources and decide if it is reliable.
3. complain: Residents are complaining because traffic in the area has increased.
4. correct: If my calculations are correct, we’re about 10 kilometres from Christchurch.
5. false: he statement gives us a false impression that we understand something when we do not.
6. guess: You can guess what happened next.
7. improve: Many wines improve with age.
8. list: Make a list of all the things you have to do.
9. sentence: She received an eight-year prison sentence.
10. spell: Pupils should know how to spell commonly used words.

Academic

1. achieved: Aroha achieved very good exam results.
2. analyse: She still needs to analyse the data.
3. area: Crime rates are significantly higher in urban areas.
4. aspect: Dealing with people is the most important aspect of my work.
5. bias: It’s clear that the company has a bias against women and minorities.
6. coherent: She had written a coherent account of the incident.
7. compose: Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen.
8. demonstrate: The study demonstrates the link between low literacy and poor health.
9. edit: The newspaper edits letters before printing them
10. evaluate: You should be able to evaluate your own work.

Technical

1. accent: I noticed that he spoken with a slight American accent.
2. acronym: NATO is an acronym for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
3. affixes: Affixes are a group of letters added to the beginning or end of a word to change its meaning or use, such as ‘un-‘, ‘mis-‘, ‘-ness’, or ‘-ly’
4. chronological: We arranged the documents in chronological order.
5. cohesion: Cohesion refers to a close relationship, based on grammar or meaning, between two parts of a sentence or a larger piece of writing.
6. collocation: Collocation refers to the way in which some words are often used together, or a particular combination of words used in this way.
7. cognitive: As a university student he had studied education and cognitive psychology.
8. ellipsis: Ellipsis is when words are deliberately left out of a sentence, though the meaning can still be understood.
9. homonym: The noun ‘bear’ and the verb ‘bear’ are homonyms; that is, they have the same spelling and sound the same, but the meaning for each is different.
10. rime: A rime is the part of a syllable which consists of its vowel and any consonant sounds that come after it, such as “it” in the word “split”

The next step from here will be to partially gap out the single word that I want to assess in each sentence.

And turn this into a worksheet… I’ll do this next and upload it to another post.