Module 1: Activity 2

 a.      What is corandic?  Corandic is an emurient grof with many fribs.

b.     What does corandic grank from?  Corandic grans from corite.

c.      How do garpers excarp the tarances from the corite? Garpers excap the corite by glarking the corite and starping it in tranker-clarped storbs.

d.     What does the slorp finally frast? The slorp finally frast a pragety, blickant crankle:  coranda

e.      What is coranda? Coranda is a cargurt, grinkling corandic and borigen.

f.        How is the corandic nacerated from the borigen? The corandic is nacerated from the borigen by means of loracity.

g.      What do the garkers finally thrap? The garkers finally thrap a glick, bracht, glupous grapant, corandic. Which granks in many starps.

I was able to answer such questions based upon the word order and the syntactic clues. The questions were only recall questions that were identical to the sentences in the passage. The assessment questions only required me to look for the words in the questions that matched the words in the text. I was then able to provide an answer, and get the answer correct without even comprehending what the passage was about.

Unfortunately, many questions that children are given are like the questions above. I had no idea what I was reading, but I was able to get every question correct simply based upon syntactic clues. Assessing the children on simple recall facts that specifically match the text is showing the students that it is not a necessity to comprehend what you are reading. It is important for students to use syntactic strategies when reading, but it is also important for the students to grasp the meaning of the text. We as teachers need to be sure that the assessments we are able to create truly assess the students on comprehension using a sociopsycholinguistic method. Many standardized tests and curriculum based workbook and activities unfortunately use questions such as the ones above. These questions require only one part of the sociopsycholinguistic view of reading, but as seen through this activity, there are many more parts to reading that play a role in a reader fully grasping the meaning of a text.