Evaluative study of test samples from the English Department, Faculty of Education, Sana’a University in light of the scientific standards for setting achievement tests

Abstract

This article aims to explore to what extent tests in the English Department, Sana’a University, conform to standards adopted by the study team, and that must be met in setting test questions in general. The study employs the descriptive analytical approach. It is divided into an introduction and three sections. section 1 discusses the study  population, consisting of test sheets prepared by English Departments’ faculty in the academic year 2004-2005, Faculties of Education (Sana’a - Arhab - Almahwit). Section 2 tackles the test sheets’ containment, i.e. (40) courses, (50) tests and (1149) questions. Section 3 presents the analysis of the test sheets after the instrument validity was confirmed. The study concludes that there are tests not considering standards of well-prepared tests, which could be ascribed to the lack of clear course specifications, which in turn necessitates revising such specifications and setting clear instructions determining each language skill’s specificity.