AN ACHIEVEMENT TEST IN READING COMPREHEN

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AN ACHIEVEMENT TEST IN READING COMPREHENSION, GRAMMAR AWARENESS AND LITERATURE FOR GRADE TEN STUDENTS OF ANGELICUM

PRIMAROSA SCHOOL, AY. 2015-2016

Clark Dominic L. Alipasa and Manasseh T. Ranada

ENG640m: Language Testing and Evaluation

De La Salle University, Manila

I. Introduction

K to 12 (also K-12) is an education system under the Department of Education that aims to enhance learners’ basic skills, produce more competent citizens, and prepare graduates for lifelong learning and employment.“K” stands for Kindergarten and “12” refers to the succeeding 12 years of basic education (6 years of elementary education, 4 years of junior high school, and 2 years of senior high school) (K12Philippines, 2015).

It has been implemented in the country when President Benigno Aquino III signed it into law in 2013 to purposively focus on lifelong learning competencies or skills to produce graduates who are qualified and capable to work. Thus, language as the basis of all communication, the primary instrument of though and the foundation of all human relationship is of major importance and one of the core subects in this K-12 enhanced basic education program.

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Integrating the above-mentioned principles, the conceptual framework in the next page shows that the heart of the LAMC is making meaning through language and that it has five (5) components (DepEd, 2013) in which assessment play a highly-significant role.

The Conceptual Framework

The framework below shows that assessments are one of pillars of the k-12 English Language Arts and Multiliteracies curriculum. It has five components: learning processes, effective language use (understanding of culutres, languages, processes and strategies), the macro skills making meaning through language, and holistic assessment

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Significance of the Study

A holistic assessment should be administered in order to garner valid and reliable feedbacks that will be communicated to benefit students, teachers, administrators and curriculum developers who are all involved in the integrated language arts learning process.

There are integrated language arts domains which are reorganized and aligned with the five sub-strands, and these three domains, which appear below, deem consistent in the reading and writing fields that are prevalent in written summative assessments. The table in the next page shows that alignment of reading comprehension, grammar awareness and literature to the reading and writing sub-strands:

LANGUAGE ARTS

DOMAINS LISTENING SPEAKING READING WRITING VIEWING Reading

Rationale and Statement of the Problem

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1. In which learning domain among reading comprehension, grammar awareness and literature have students encountered troubles or difficulties in answering?

2. Which component among knowledge, process and understanding contain the most number of acceptable and/or improvable items?

3. Which items in the achievement test require to be revised, replaced or removed based on the item difficulty indeces?

When the answers to these questions are sought, the target output of this study is to create and present an achievement test in English for grade 10 students that evaluate their competencies in reading comprehension, grammar awareness and structure and literature. With the results of the pilot administration and the subsequent item analysis, items will be improved as necessary in order to generate a test which is considered to be valid and reliable to assess students’ longitudinal language learning.

II

Methods

In order to generate an achievement test that can validly and reliably evaluate students’ learning of important competencies in reading comprehenion, grammar and literature, a pilot administration will take place, and through the presentation and analysis results, the test constructors can deliberate about appropriacy and complexity of every item whether or not they should be retained, replaced or revised.

Context of the Study

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site and target institution of the study. The said test is administered in the Grade 10 classroom in the Day 1 of their final exam. The media of instruction used in the school are Filipino and English, yet Filipino is more commonly used, for this is the native language of the majority (if not all). The above-named institution also follows the prescribed K-12 enhanced basic education curriculum of the K-12, its updated grading system, and the approaches that are advised therealong.

Ethical Considerations

The permission of the school administrators is asked prior to the entrustment of the reproduced questionnaires to the grade 10 English teacher and adviser of the Grade 10 students of Angelicum Primarosa Montessori School. Accordingly, the grade 10 students are informed beforehand about the said achievement test that will contain test items for reading comprehension, grammar and literature. The teachers are also oriented about the purpose of the study and about the instructions or what the students are expected to do in every part. Furthermore, all the participating students of grade ten are also aware of the rationale of the test administration, and their scores will have no bearing in their 4th quarter grades or current term standing, nor their names will be mentioned individually in the term paper that will be presented in De La Salle University.

The Research Participants

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curriculum—first batch of completers and soon-to-be graduates of the first ever Grade 12 or senior high school in the Philippines in 2018.

Research Instrument

The achievement test consists of 52 items: 25 points for knowlede, 15 for process, and 12 for understanding. This is based on the required percentage that easy up to the most challenging item should comprise in a test. The types of test for the knowledge part are identification and error recognition with the following learning competencies:

 identify the kind of sensory imagery used;

 determine how literary devices can be used and interpreted;

 use pronouns effectively; and

 enumerate elements of a narrative.

Then the process part is made up of short-response essay questions and sentence-completion items with the following competencies which are all based on the DepEd English curriculum guide as well:

 infer the theme by analyzing the elements specific to a selection;

 explain how specific element build up the theme of a selection; and

 use reflexive and intensive pronouns.

The last part is composed of a reading comprehension test each of the three questions to be answered by a composition seek to cover the following competencies:

 make generalizations;

 use patterns and techniques of developing an argumentative essay; and

 evaluate literature as a vehicle of expressing and resolving conflicts between and among

individuals or groups.

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III

Results

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23

14 67%

moderate

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improves the test items that will be used again in later tests. It can also be used to eliminate ambiguous or misleading items in a single test.

Item Difficulty

In the given result, the KNOWLEDGE part or test items nos. 1-25 with one correct alternative worth a single point the item difficulty is simply the percentage of students who answer an item correctly. In this case, it is also equal to the item mean. The item difficulty index ranges from 0 to 100; the higher the value, the easier the question.

Item difficulty is relevant for determining whether students have learned the concept being tested. It also plays an important role in the ability of an item to discriminate between students who know the tested material and those who do not. The item will have low discrimination if it is so difficult that almost everyone gets it wrong or guesses, or so easy that almost everyone gets it right.

To maximize item discrimination, desirable difficulty levels are slightly higher than midway between chance and perfect scores for the item. (The chance score for five-option questions, for example, is 20 because one-fifth of the students responding to the question could be expected to choose the correct option by guessing.)

Item Discrimination

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INDICES OF DIFFICULTY AND DISCRIMINATION

(BY HOPKINS AND ANTES)

INDEX

DIFFICULTY

DISCRIMINATIO

N

0.86 above

Very Easy To be discarded

0.71 – 0.85

Easy To be revised

0.30 – 0.70

Moderate Very good items

0.15 – 0.29

Difficult To be revised

0.14 below

Very Difficult To be discarded

The following shows item nos. 1-25 based on the the difficulty level and the item discrimination. The items are arranged from the very easy to very difficult. We can also see the number of students who answered each item correctly and its percentage.

Item

1 20 95% very easy To be discarded

11 16 76% easy To be revised

12 14 67% moderate Very good items

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7 3 14% very difficult To be discarded

10 3 14% very difficult To be discarded

9 0 0% very difficult To be discarded

As we have tabulated the results, we have analyzed that there are 8 very easy items that needed to be discarded, as well as 3 very difficult items. Also, there are 4 easy items that are necessary to be revised. Furthermore, there are 10 moderate items that are very good items which will be kept in this test.

Moving to the second part of the assessment which is Process, items 26 to 31 are about inferring the theme of selected fables. Out of 21 respondents, only 11 are able to formulate a satisfactory theme. With the difficulty index of 0.52, these items on inferring the theme of the selections may be retained and considered in the improved questionnaire for the achievement test, for the percentage shows that the test type is not so easy and not so difficult. Thus, the first part of the process assessment is just appropriate to the level of the target learners.

Whereas the first part of the process is just labeled moderate, the items second part about the proper use of pronouns and identifying whether they are intensive or reflextive garner different difficulty indeces:

Item 32 is very easy, while 33 and 34 are easy. We can revise the introductory part of the paragraph to completed with a more challenging setting; yet, giving easy items in the preliminary items of a part may also be advisable according to other sources. Items 36 and 37 with 0.67 and 0.62 are considered moderate, so these can be retained. nonetheless 38, 40 and 41 are marked easy, so we can develop the context and/or add more words and modifiers, for the students to be more able to critically think and decide what the antecedents are, and which pronouns correctly agree with them. To sum up, it is not very necessary to drop or remove the items, and only few revisions are appropriate to be effected to the given paragraph.

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follow based on what are asked and the designed rubric. As to the results of the item analysis, most of the questions are marked as difficult and very difficult. Although test questions are normally arranged from easy to difficult, revising and replacing these items may also deem very important especially the points given to this part are very integral in the composition of their grades. To respond positively to the item difficulty indices, replacing these short-essay reponse essay items into selective response type test items where students will be given with a set of choices to choose from can certainly lessen the complexity of this test, making it more suitable to their current or average lexile level in reading.

In conclusion, most items in the beggining or Knowledge part are easy, and the concluding essay items in the understanding are mostly difficult. To generate an achievement assessment which is more valid, reliable and practical, adjustments and modifications are to be undertaken to cater the needs, capability, aptitude, and level of the grade 10 students in reading comprehension, grammar awareness and structure, and world literature.

References

DepEd (2013). K-12 Curriculum Guide - English. K-12 Basic Education Curriculum. Retrieved from http://www.deped.gov.ph/sites/default/files/English%20CG%20Grade%201-10%2001.30.2014.pdf

K12Philippines (2015). What is K-12? Retrieved April 2016 from http://k12philippines.com/

University of Washington - Office of Educational Assessment. Retrieved from