Assessing University Final Examination Questions Written in English

Abstract

Test is regarded as a tool to measure the outcome of teaching and learning processes. There are other tools, but tests are still used to a great extent. The objective of the current study is to assess university final examination questions written in English, and College of Education-Shaqlawa has been selected as a sample. The test papers have been received from the Examination Committee of the college. Tests have several properties, but only three properties, namely accuracy, objectivity and scorability, have been chosen to be the criteria of the research. This is because the selected characteristics are general, while the left ones are specific to particular subjects. The procedure of the study is descriptive and analysis. The test papers have been analysed twice for reliability. The researchers have benefited from other researchers’ criteria. It has been detected that the test papers are objective to great extent. This is due to the test techniques that are used by the instructors. Unfortunately, some test papers have been found to be inaccurate. Inaccuracy has resulted from many areas such as grammatical mistakes and punctuation marks. Little attention has been given to the field of punctuation marks. Furthermore, some test papers have been detected to seem strange in terms of scorability. To clarify it, the mark distribution and the total mark of some test papers are not in agreement with the requirements. Finally, the conclusions, suggestions and references have been shown.