An Analysis of Middle School English Test Items Made with Conversational Texts

An Analysis of Middle School English Test Items Made with Conversational Texts

This study aims to investigate how the conversational texts are used in middle school English test constructions. For that aim, the study collected 30 in-house English tests from ten middle schools in the five school districts of a metropolitan city. The study first analyzed the proportion of the test items made with the conversational texts. Then, it analyzed the proportion of content-independent items and content-dependent items, along with an analysis of the kinds of tasks required by the content-dependent items. In addition, school tests were also compared in order to examine the similarities/differences among them. According to the result, not a few test items made with the conversational texts were content-independent, measuring discrete linguistic knowledge. The tasks required by the content-dependent items tended to focus on two kinds and the other four kinds were measuring the reading ability rather than the communicative competence, suggesting that not a few items made with the conversational texts were used to measure the reading ability. In addition, there was a wide variation among the tests administered in different schools and for different grades in their use of the conversational texts. Based on the result, the study concludes that middle school English test items made with the conversational texts leave much room to desire to measure the students’ communication competence in a more valid way.