Quality Evaluation of The English Proficiency Test for Automotive Specification Certificate Students at Nakhonsawan Technical College

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of the English proficiency test for Automotive Specification Certificate students at Nakhonsawan Technical College. The 200-item test was evaluated by three experts in the field of English teaching with the use of the test quality and the Index of the Item-Objectives Congruence (IOC) forms. It was found that 154 test items with the IOC between 0.5 and 1.00 were congruent with the objectives. The rest with the IOC equal to 0.33, 0.00 and -0.33 was revised in accordance with the experts’ comments and suggestions. The validated 200 English proficiency test items divided into two sets, A and B, with 100 test items in each set were used to assess two pilot groups, each of which included 30 first-year Automotive Specification diploma students. The results revealed that the difficulty levels of two test sets were moderate (p = 0.49 for Set A and 0.53 for Set B), but the discrimination levels were low (r = 0.137 for Set A and 0.173 for Set B). The reliability (KR20) was within acceptable range (KR20 = 0.492 for Set A and 0.664 for Set B). The results were discussed in terms of three assessment instruments for each test item: IOC, difficulty levels, and discrimination levels.