Direct assessment approaches allow us to determine people's literacy levels based on their performance on a test or on literacy tasks given by an examiner. This approach is used routinely all over the world with learners of all ages and levels in learning contexts (either in formal schools or in informal education settings). However, it has been, to date, far less often used in large-scale national assessments of literacy skills.

To illustrate some of the key issues involved in conducting direct assessments on a large scale (as opposed to a small-scale classroom assessment, where one teacher tests some students), the following are six sample assessment tasks.

First, try to do each task, but more important is that you think, after you do each task, about the following four questions:

1. What aspect(s) or process(es) of literacy does the task (item) measure?
   
2. How well does the task measure that aspect or process of literacy?
   
3. How important is it to measure that aspect of literacy?
   
4. What issues may be involved in terms of administration (giving the task) or scoring (giving a grade/mark)? For example, can it be scored simply as "correct" or "incorrect"? Or are there multiple levels or qualities of performance? Who will score? What training should the "tester" or the "scorer" have?

The first three questions require that you reflect on your own conception of literacy (go back to our discussion of "definitions," if needed). The last question points to pragmatic aspects of direct literacy assessment.

These four questions will be repeated with each task. A short summary discussion later on will comment on all the issues raised.

Start sample tasks

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