A Comparative Study on the School-based English Achievement Test and the National Assessment of English Achievement

This study aims to examine the test usefulness (Bachman & Palmer, 1996) of the School-based Achievement Test (SBT), using an empirical comparative analysis in relation to the National Assessment of English Achievement (NAEA) within an elementary school context in 2011. The participants in this study were 563 Korean elementary school students. The participants results in the achievement test were measured using statistical methods - descriptive statistics, the Wilcoxon signed rank test, and the Kruskal-Wallis test - and a correlation analysis was conducted in relation to the results of the 2011 NAEA for 6th graders administered by Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE). The findings of the research indicated that there were significant differences in the NAEA results between the Mid-Term (MT) and Final Term Exam (FT) (Z=-5.89, p=.00, p<.05; Z=-5.89, p=.00, p<.05, respectively), as well as between the corresponding achievement levels of MTs (χ²=163.07, p=.00, p<.05) and FTs (χ²=182.40, p=.00, p<.05). With regard to the results of the correlation analysis comparing the SBT and NAEA, statistically significant correlations were found. Some implications and suggestions were then drawn from these results.