Philippine E-Journals

Item Analysis of an English Test for College Students

Catherine M Roble

 

Abstract:

This is a descriptive study aimed at finding out the level of response of the students in the communicative test in terms of the reliability index of the communicative test, the items’ mean difficulty, the discrimination index, the item fit, the clarity of language, how the items were constructed, the options used, whether there were items functioning differently, if the item characteristics match the ability of the freshmen general education English 1 students, what the hierarchy of skill indicators as components of communicative competence is, what model test can be developed for general education students, and what syllabus can be designed out of the model. Samples of the study were 283 students from four different universities in Davao City. It was found out that the reliability index of the communicative test is .81, the items’ mean difficulty is .419, the discrimination indices of the model test ranged from .20-.62, the item fit ranged from .56-1.44 to 0.93-1.07 which is within confidence intervals, the language of the test is clear, the construction of items observed principles of language testing, the options were parallel, the parameter estimates were -0.303, 0.600, -0.613, and 0.316 for Universities A, B, C and D respectively which means that the test items were functioning differently, that is, positively for students from University B; the item characteristics matched the ability of the freshmen General Education English 1 students; the hierarchy of skill indicators as components of communicative competence began with expressing gratitude appropriately, closing a conversation appropriately, applying courtesy in letters, and advances to inferring meaning through context, responding in affirmative, and giving meaning to unknown words; based on findings, the model test which can be developed for general education students is one which is communicative and is reliable, valid, practical, and fit to the students’ abilities; out of the model test, the enhanced syllabus which can be designed is competency-based. The findings in this study imply that communicative testing has wash back effect on teaching. This kind of testing confirms the theory that says that learning is a cyclical process.