An Assessmet of the Content Validity of High School English Language Tests in Relation to Textbooks Concerned
No Thumbnail Available
Date
1995-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main objective of this study is to examine whether or not high school English
language tests currently administered in schools adequately represent - both in content and
in format - the practice exercises contained in the corresponding textbooks.
Since some research works were conducted concerning the teaching and learning
activities of the other grades. for the purpose of this study, grade ten was selected. The
main data sources thus were English language textbook and sample test papers of the said
grade gathered from different government comprehensive. vocational and senior secondary
schools. The contents of l O" grade textbook and those of the English language tests were
analysed. For the purpose of this study a representative list of content areas was drawn
up by referring to the instructional material concerned.
In order to assess the attitude of teachers and students towards the current 1(Jh
grade English examinations. questionnaires were administered to those subjects.
Interviews were also conducted to some subjects for the same purpose. Then, the
Spearman's rank- order correlation coefficient statistical method was used in order to
determine the degree of the relationship between the frequencies from the analysis of the
contents and formats of the textbook and those from the analysis of the examination
questions.
The results of the findings show that the contents of the sample test papers
generally correlate with the contents of the textbook. However, in specific terms. the
different content areas of the textbook were not proportionally represented in the sample
test papers. The results of the study have shown that the weighting allocated to the
various content areas and skills in the sample test papers fail to adequately mirror that of
the language components and skills of the instructional material.
ill
Regarding the formats, the two materials (the textbook and the sample test papers)
were found to be at variance. In other words, the limited formats employed in the sample
examination papers seem to fail in enabling candidates to make use of their knowledge of
the English language in the various content areas and skills. On the bases of these
findings, it is concluded that the English language examinations currently administered at
Grade Ten level, relatively speaking, seem to possess low content validity.
Description
Keywords
Language Tests in Relation to Textbooks