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Dr. Mohammad Shuaib Asiri recently delivered an insightful presentation, titled "Comparing Multiple Choice, Verb Conjugation, and Error Correction in Grammar ‎Assessment" at a seminar hosted by the Language Research Center on October 24, 2018. The focus of the seminar was his latest research into the nuances of grammar assessment methodologies.

Dr. Asiri initiated the presentation by drawing a comparison between selected-response tasks and constructed task formats, highlighting the potential drawbacks associated with the former. For his research, he selected three task types typically employed in grammar assessments: Multiple Choice, Verb Conjugation, and Error Correction. His research aimed to determine the correlation between task formats and the effective measurement of grammatical ability, the relationship between performance on task formats and strategy use, and their correlation with eliciting answer explanations.

The study, which involved 106 intermediate-level students, yielded in-depth findings that Dr. Asiri discussed thoroughly during the seminar. He concluded that multiple-choice tasks significantly differ from verb conjugation and error correction tasks when measuring grammatical abilities. These differences notably manifest in the tasks' ability to reflect learners' rule recognition versus their capacity to independently produce content.

According to Dr. Asiri, the usage of strategies differs across the three tasks concerning test management and test-wiseness. Furthermore, he observed a positive correlation between the difficulty of tasks and the complexity of answer explanations.

Dr. Asiri advised that incorporating more constructed tasks than selected-response ones would stimulate more effective learning. He emphasized the importance of integrating task formats with language skills for a comprehensive language assessment.

The seminar was lauded as an interactive and overall successful event, sparking stimulating discussions about grammar assessment.