Teachers commonly assign diagnostic assessments at the beginning of the semester.
A grammar diagnostic, related to the word "diagnosis," tests students on their grammar knowledge and skills. Grammar diagnostics inform teachers of what aspects of grammar their students are already familiar with and what they still need to learn. Teachers can then develop grammar lessons based on these diagnostic assessments.
Description
Grammar diagnostic assessments frequently include multiple choice questions: (She walked ___ the store, a) over, b) to, c) beneath, d) under), fill in the blank; (She took __ bath yesterday), circling the correct answer; (She say/says she is hungry); and correcting errors in sentences (She was tired by the time the movie have ended). Often teachers divide different kinds of questions into difference sections of the test to prevent students from mixing up instructions. Grammar diagnostics can be anywhere from 10 questions to 10 pages long, depending on the skill and grade level of the students.
Content
Comprehensive diagnostic assessments cover the eight parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, pronoun, conjunction and interjection), verb conjugation (the past, present and future tenses of the simple, perfect and progressive forms), pluralizing nouns, both regular and irregular (for instance, "bogs" vs. "boxes" and "oxen"), subject-verb agreement, sentence structure (simple, compound, complex and compound-complex) and independent and dependent clauses. Depending on the level of the students, diagnostics can also ask students to locate the subject and predicate of a sentence, or circle noun or prepositional phrases. Diagnostic exams are generally comprehensive tests that probe students' grammar weaknesses and strengths.
Types and Levels
Because they are simply a series of questions that test students' grammar skills, teachers can devise their own questions or take a selection of questions from a grammar workbook or the Internet. Any student who can read and write and has some prior knowledge of grammatical rules can be given a diagnostic grammar test. Grammar diagnostics for middle school don't need to be complicated; testing for the parts of speech, basic sentence structure and subject-verb agreement is appropriate at this level. High school and college grammar diagnostics need to be more rigorous and test for not only the parts of speech and sentence structure. but also the different verb tenses (simple, perfect and progressive), the different kinds of verbs (transitive and intransitive) and different kinds of phrases (noun, prepositional, adjectival). Teachers can test ESL learners through diagnostics that cover many of the same areas.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Diagnostic assessments provide teachers with instant ideas for grammar lessons. Effective grammar lessons target problem areas for students, rather than reiterating concepts students are already familiar with. Because diagnostics only allow one right answer per question, they are easy to mark and produce immediate results. Teachers can tailor grammar diagnostics to cover any level, from elementary school to university. Diagnostic assessments, however, can be misleading. Sometimes students with formal grammar training, such as ESL students, will excel on these kinds of tests, but their actual writing will be rife with grammatical errors. This is because they can recognize grammatical errors in closed situations such as a test, but when they try and construct more complex sentences on their own, they struggle to express themselves within the rigid grammatical rules they know. Additionally, the nature of multiple choice questions engenders the possibility of students guessing right answers by chance.
Tags: diagnostic assessments, different kinds, parts speech, sentence structure, already familiar
