The Construction And Validation of a test in English for Tertiary Education With Reference to Addis Ababa University
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Date
1995-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study explores the validity of a battery of tests of
English for academic purposes. A goal-oriented, skills- and
task-based test of English is developed and validated as a
measure of the English language disposition of Freshman
students at Addis Ababa" University.
The test is based on analysis of the communicative language
needs of the students (Morris, 1982; Haile Michael, 1993): the
receptive skills of reading and listening rank higher than the
productive skills of writing and speaking.
The reliability of the test is quite satisfactory: the
coefficients are 0.94 (KR20) for the written test, 0.88 (KR20)
for the listening test and 0.73 (KR21) for the oral test.
The level of difficulty: and discrimination of the test is
reasonable. The mean facility value of the written test is
0.640 with mean discrimination index of 0.314; and the mean
facili ty value of the listening test is 0.612 with mean
discrimination index of 0.526. All the sections of the tests
are properly contributing to the total tests. The average
item-test correlations of the sections range from 0.242 to
0.515 for both tests.
The validity of the test is also satisfactory. Evidence from
the comments of students and language teachers suggests that
the tests have good face and content validities.
There is evidence in support of the construct and concurrent
validities of the tests. Both intercorrelations of sections
and correlations between tests show a degree of common
variance as well as some unshared variance; ie, with overlaps
not exceeding 44% for the former and 62% for the latter. In
other words, they are all testing English, but different
aspects or skills are also being tapped as well. The greatest
agreement (r=O.81) is observed between the new written test
and the criterion (written) test. In addition, there is
evidence of a clear relationship between the test scores and
the University Semester Grade Point Average (SGPA): both the
written test and the test of listening correlate with SGPA at
r=O.6.
Finally, the study concludes with some observations on the
testing of English at this University based on these findings.
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test in English for Tertiary Education