Towards the development of the Talisay Malayan Academy english achievement test, I (TMA-EAT,I)

• Main Author: Ello, Antoinette T.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1987
• Subjects: Achievement tests > Design and construction; English language > Examinations; questions; etc.; Secondary Education; Secondary Education and Teaching
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/10
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study attempts to develop an achievement test in English for Talisay Malayan Academy. The TMA-EAT has been designed to determine the strengths and weaknesses of students in the first year high school English. The results of the test will hopefully be used for curriculum planning and evaluation. The development of the TMA-EAT, I, underwent the following steps: (1) Planning the test, (2) Setting up the objectives of the test, (3) Developing the test specifications, (4) Item writing and reviewing, (5) Assembling the pretest forms, (6) Administering the pretest items, (7) Analyzing pretest data, (8) Selecting acceptable items for the final form, and, (9) Assembing the final form of the test. Difficulty indices (p) ranged from .03 to .92 ( very easy to very difficult ) with a mean of .42 which indicated average difficulty level. One hundred sixty pretest items (67 percent) were of average difficulty. Mean discrimination index was .44, suggestive of high discriminating power of the overall pretest items. Of the 240 items, 140 (62 percent) were considered as highly discriminating between high scorers and low scorers in the test. As regards the effectiveness of distractors, nine percent were not plausible or effective in attracting more examinees from the low-scoring group than from the high-scoring group. As a whole, out of 240 items fielded to 203 first year students of Talisay Malayan Academy, 177 (74 percent) met the criteria for acceptable items. Hence, items included in the final form of the test were chosen from these acceptable ones. In as much as the study was limited to the assembly of the final form, it has been recommended that there will be an establishment of norms for meaningful interpretation of scores across contents, and to conduct validity studies, e.g. criterion-related validity by validating scores on the test against English grades of the examinees, or against other test scores on an English test.