Assessing L2 vocabulary through multiple-choice, matching, gap-fill, and word formation items

Ferit Kilickaya

doi:10.17951/lsmll.2019.43.3.155-166

Abstract

The current study aims to determine the effect of multiple-choice, matching, gap-fill and word formation items used in assessing L2 vocabulary on learners’ performance and to obtain the learners’ views regarding the use of these types of items in vocabulary assessment. The convenience sampling method was selected, and the participants of the study included 30 freshmen enrolled in the General English course offered in the Department of Public Administration at a state university in Turkey. The main findings revealed that the participants considered the multiple-choice and matching items were easy to understand and to answer and that gap-fill and word formation items were difficult<br />due to several reasons.

Highlights

Vocabulary assessment is an indispensable aspect of language teaching as Nation (2008) clearly indicates the aim of vocabulary assessment is “to work out what needs to be taught, to monitor and encourage learning, to place learners in the right class, to measure learners’ achievement by giving a grade, and to measure learners’ vocabulary size or proficiency” (p. 144)
The participants obtained the highest average on the questions in the MC format (X =15.73) and the lowest on the questions in the word formation (WF) format (X =10.30)
These tests revealed that the participants’ scores obtained on the MC and matching tests differed significantly from the gap-fill and WF ones, with the difference found to be significant at the 0.05 level

Summary

Introduction

Vocabulary assessment is an indispensable aspect of language teaching as Nation (2008) clearly indicates the aim of vocabulary assessment is “to work out what needs to be taught, to monitor and encourage learning, to place learners in the right class, to measure learners’ achievement by giving a grade, and to measure learners’ vocabulary size or proficiency” (p. 144). The results indicated that teaching and testing vocabulary through cloze tests encouraged students to use the vocabulary productively rather than receptively since the participants tried to infer the meaning benefiting from the context provided. Another study by Kremmel and Schmitt (2016) investigated whether the results of assessments that included various item formats could provide information on the learners’ ability to use words.

Results

Conclusion