There are three main types of sentences: Simple sentences Conjoined sentences (also known as compound sentences) Complex sentences SIMPLE SENTENCES Simple sentences contain only one idea E.g. Zubair fell. Simple sentences comprise only one idea, clause and verb group. We say verb group (instead of verb) because a verb group itself can consist of one word (fell, assembled, cooked, won) or more...
The infinitive with ‘to‘ is used to talk about people’s purposes, the reasons why they do things. Sara is going to the shop to buy a new CD. (= because she wants to buy a new CD) I’m going to Africa to have a vacation. (= because I want to have a vacation) DO NOT USE “for” before the infinitive of purpose! Sara is going to the shop for to buy a new CD. *...
Not all languages have inflectional morphology. Some languages have little or no morphology. Still other languages have relatively complex words with distinct parts, each representing a morpheme. Traditionally these 3 types of languages have been identified as : Inflectional Isolating Agglutinating Inflectional Morphology In such languages: each word tends to be a single isolated morpheme lack...
Objective tests measure one’s ability to remember facts & figures understanding of course materials. These tests are often designed to make test-takers think independently. Good objective tests require test-takers to employ high level critical reasoning and make fine discriminations to determine the best answer Objective Tests. ‘ The most common objective test questions are:...
Phrase structure rules are ‘formulae’ that describe a given language’s syntax. Phrase structure rules break a natural language sentence down into its constituent parts (also known as syntactic categories. Phrase structure rules are usually of the form: meaning that the constituent A is separated into the two sub-constituents B and C E.g. This means that a sentence...
A Table of Specifications is a two-way chart which describes the topics to be covered in a test and the number of items or points which will be associated with each topic. Sometimes the types of items are described as well. The purpose of a Table of Specifications is to identify the achievement domains being measured and to ensure that a fair and representative sample of questions appear on the...
A phrase is a group of words acting as a single part of speech and not containing both a subject and a verb. It is a part of a sentence, and does not express a complete thought. Noun Phrases Noun phrases must have a Noun (or Pronoun) and may or may not have other modifiers e.g. Adjective phrases An Adjective phrase must consist an adjective (A) and may or may not have an adverb phrase (AdvP) e.g...
A piece of language is said to be coherent (therefore discourse) if it has a discernible, unified meaning. A piece of discourse is said to be cohesive if its components (ie. sentences/phrases/words) are bound together through linguistic and non-linguistic features to form a unified whole. The linguistic features used to link one word/phrase/sentence to another are called formal links. Some common...
Test bias is the presence of some characteristics of an item in the test, that results in differential performance by individuals of the same ability but different sub-group When important decisions are made based on test scores, it is critical to avoid bias which may unfairly influence test-takers’ scores Fairness and bias are not the same thing. Fairness has to do with how a test is used...
Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure. A test is considered reliable if we get the same result repeatedly. E.g. If a test designed to measure a specific trait, then each time the test is administered to a subject, the results should be approximately the same. Unfortunately, it is impossible to calculate reliability exactly but there are several different ways to estimate reliability...