The Background of Study
measuring person’ ability or knowledge in a given domain”.
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Tests are used for pedagogical purposes, either as a mean of motivating students to study or as a
mean of reviewing the material taught. Students usually tend to study harder when they are going to have an
examination rather than when they are not and they will emphasize in studying the material that expect to be tested. Thus, if the teacher announces that they are
going to give an examination, most students are motivated to study or to review the material assigned.
A test is supposed to be well constructed so that it can be used effectively. To be said as a good test, it has to fulfill the characteristics of good test, they are
validity, reliability and practicality. It is valid if the test can measure what is supposed to be measured. It can be reliable if the result from the test is the same
even though the test is administered to the same standard for several times. A test can be practical if it is easy to do and administered.
In applying the three characteristics above, the teacher should prepare the test as good as possible. After that, the teacher should administer and score the
test; it is desirable to evaluate the effectiveness of the test, especially the test item because it is necessary for teachers to use their own judgment to know how well
the test item works. This is done by studying the students’ responses to each item. When formalized, the procedure is called item analysis.
Item analysis provides a quick, simple technique for appraising the effectiveness of individual test items.
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Item analysis procedures provide information for evaluating the functional effectiveness of each item and for
detecting weaknesses that should be corrected. This information is useful when reviewing the test with students and it is indispensable when building a file of
high quality items. There are three characteristics which are usually determined for a test
item: first, item difficulty; it indicates how difficult each item was for the group.
3
H. Douglass, Teaching by Principles, An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, New York: Addison Wesley, Longman, 2001, p. 384.
4
Norman E. Gronlund, Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1981, p. 262.
Second, discriminatory power; it tells how well the item performs in separating the better students from the poorer students. Third, item distracter; for multiple
choice items, it indicates how effective each alternative was for the item. So it can be concluded that item analysis provide us the data whether the test item is too
difficult or too easy, whether it can discriminate the students or not, and whether all the alternatives functioned as intended.
Incidentally, the writer is as a practice teacher at “SMPN 87” Pondok Pinang. She often hears some of the students said that English items in their
school are hard and some students said in the contrary. Therefore, from the personal experience above, she is interested in figuring out the quality of
discriminating power of English summative test items a t “SMPN 87” Pondok
Pinang. The reason why the writer chooses the discriminating power is because she thinks that the discriminating power deals more with the students than the
other two choices-the level on difficulty and the effectiveness of the distracter. Based on the explanation above, the writer tries to limit the problem of
item analysis that she will discuss, so she just focuses on the discriminating power of the test item. The test item that will be analyzed by the writer is a final test of
odd semester which is tested on th e second grade of “SMPN 87” Pondok Pinang.
The main aim of this study is to know how well the test item can discriminate between the students who have achieved well and those who have achieved
poorly. So, the writer tries to analyze and interpret it under the title
“AN ITEM ANALYSIS ON THE DISCRIMINATING POWER OF ENGLISH
SUMMATIVE TEST”. And this study will be done at second grade of “SMPN 87” Pondok Pinang.