>> But what are some of the disadvantages with fill in the blank?
>> They're still not producing a lot.
>> Okay, yes.
>> They're just producing a word.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> From a test-taker's perspective what can be very frustrating and if you now know
that two words and you're pretty much screwed or--
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, yeah.
[ Laughter ]
>> So they can be frustrating in their own way.
You're trying to-- it's almost like a puzzle, right, like a jigsaw puzzle or something.
You're trying to fit things into these blanks and--
>> And they sit there forever.
>> Other things?
>> And possible answers can be various.
>> Right, right.
So we think they'll be easier to score and probably than an extended response they are
but when you actually get the answers you realize there are a lot more possibilities
than you realize when you wrote that test.
So a good answer key and piloting it is very, very important for the scoring certainly.
Any other things?
>> Like in our example in the example test, it can decontextualize the language
or it can contextualize it, it's just a matter of how it's designed.
>> And how it's designed, yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
>> Another disadvantage actually was an advantage we talked about also and the fact
that it could assess a lot of different things.
So if you are really looking at reading and you're using a fill in the blank,
there might be some blanks that are actually testing grammar
or something other than reading comprehension.
And so sometimes it can be difficult to interpret why a student chose the correct answer
or an incorrect answer even though we think we're testing reading
or we think we're testing grammar, maybe its vocabulary, or something like that.
So while it can be an advantage, it can also make it more difficult
to interpret sometimes the results, okay.
So we just talked about two kinds of indirect assessment and there are plenty of others.
But just to summarize some of the things that came
up that they can be problematic 'cause they're not very communicative.
You guys talked about meaningfulness and production.
They aren't all that authentic to what students are actually gonna have to do
with language probably outside of the classroom.
And some people would say that they're maybe not very motivating
because students aren't using language or they're not getting to create things
that also might not make them very meaningful to the test taker and they can be hard to write.
>> However, we still use them and we see them in a lot of places for a lot of reasons.
One is they seem easier to grade and keep in mind
that some people are teaching language classes with-- in China in a foreign language class,
how many students would you say you have? 00:02:44.970 >> I have 50 students. 00:02:46.440 >> 50 students, right. students [laughter] it's sort of unmanageable. 00:02:50.500 So imagine doing an oral interview for 50 students [laughter] it's sort of unmanageable.
And so there are contexts where or if you are teaching six classes in a semester
where you need something that's gonna be a little bit easier to grade
and still get some information about students' abilities.
It's low in terms of production so we're not finding information about how students are able
to use the language but for beginning learners, they may not be ready to use the language yet
or comfortable using the language.
And so if there are things like listening and reading, sometimes it's helpful
to use an indirect method to find out if they're able to comprehend without asking them
to say something or to write something.