Authenticity of the Test Tasks

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a. Authenticity of the Test Tasks

The preliminary data shows that the total different test items from A57, B69, C71, D32, and E45 are 123 test items and there are 50 different passages employed in it. After conducting the analysis on the test tasks of reading test items, the researcher recognized that most of the test tasks had problem to fulfill the naturalness of language used in the test instructions and the optional answers. The relevance of a particular test topic for the learner becomes significant problem in the reading test to meet the highest authenticity as well. Although the language test is not intended to test some grammatical or lexical items, the test-designers should avoid linguistic mistakes in order to represent highly authentic reading test. According to Richards 2001, the visible characteristic of authentic materials was that it provides true language pp.252- 253. It means that there should no linguistic mistakes such as typographical mistakes, lexis, morphemes, word orders and grammar syntactic matters, diction, and meaning semantic matters in the test tasks in order to avoid test takers’ confusion in understanding the test instructions. There are 85.4 of the test tasks test instructions which meet the natural language use criterion. It is due to the existence of some linguistic facets. There is a sample of mistakes in deixis which can be seen in a test question number 16 in test version A57. Test question number 16 in test version A57: 16. Instead of a loan of 500, what alternatives is offered by the officer? A. An appointment to discuss the offer. B. A cash of 500. C. An appointment with the lending officer. 72 D. A loan of less than 500. E. An appointment with the assistant manager. The inappropriate term showed unnaturalness of language use because the term was not used in the real-world situation. The word sounds more likely weird for the native speakers since the term was not suitable. The test designers employed wrong term. It happened probably because the test designers translated the term in English on their own. Therefore, the word seems funny. The inappropriate term was ‘lending officer’. After searching the appropriate word on the internet and dictionaries, the researcher found out the word ‘loan officer’ is more suitable and natural than ‘lending officer’. The linguistic facets in the test tasks of the reading test items took a part as the main cause why the reading test tasks cannot reach the highest percentage of authenticity. From 123 test tasks or test instructions there are only 105 test items which meet the natural language use criterion. As the samples of some grammatical mistakes in the reading test tasks, it can be seen in the test questions 31 and 41 of test version A57. The test item number 31, for instance, showed typographical mistakes. Consequently, the test takers would be confused in understanding the meaning. It was related to Widdowson 1976 who emphasizes that authenticity is not only about the quality of a text at all but authenticity is reached when the readers understand the writer’s intention p.264. In the test item number 31, the typographical mistakes are found in the answer A on the word ‘plans’ and ‘colorfull’. The word ‘plans’ should be plants and the word ‘colorfull’ should be colorful. If it was read, the meaning would be different. There is a typographical mistake on the word ‘absorbtion’, it should be absorption. 73 Test question number 31 in test version A57: 31. What is the main idea of paragraph 4? A. The plans can be colorfull in absorbing the photosynthesis process. B. Photosynthesis needs absorbtion of colors. C. The energy to do photosynthesis is provided not by the green light. D. Chlorophyll enables photosynthesis to absorb colors. E. Photosynthesis process gives colors to the plans. Another linguistic facet is found in test question number 41 on test version A57. The mistake belongs to morphosyntactic mistake which is related to singular and plural forms. It is related to the use of determiner as well. The test question refers to a certain sentence in paragraph three. After checking the sentence on the test question within the passage, there is a difference. The sentence in the passage was correctly written ‘...the smoke of bidi or cigar is even more hazardous to passive smokers who inhale... ’ However, the test question differently wrote ‘The smoke of bidi or cigar is more hazardous to passive smoker.’ The researcher realized there is no determiner since it referred to a passive smoker. If the test designers intended it for a lot of people, the phrase passive smoker should be followed by ‘s’ passive smokers which could indicate that it is a plural noun. Another result from the analysis, the researcher considered that all the reading test items on National Examination year 2012 are contextualized items. The reasons are that all test tasks are developed from certain learning topics namely functional texts and essays. Besides, each test tasks which is constructed from the same passage is organized thematically. In relation to the thematic items organization, the researcher identified there are 118 test tasks constructed thematically while there are five test items constructed independently. It means 74 that for the 118 test tasks there are several test items tangle up the same kinds of passages. While for the five test items, a passage is constructed only for one test item. Since the quantity of the qualified test items for the ‘existence of thematic items organization’ criterion is not important, the researcher rounded up the total number of the qualified test items to 123 test tasks in order to ease the final calculation. In the relation to the real-world representativeness, the researcher found out that all of the 123 test tasks represent the real-world situations. The test tasks on the reading test do not attempt to ask for English grammatical forms but it indicates asking for information or the meaning of some vocabulary, phrases, or sentences. Besides, themes or topics of the passages are oriented from real-world contexts. Lastly, the relevance of a particular test topic to senior high school students becomes a problem in the reading test tasks of National Examination year 2012. There are two test tasks numbers 28 and 29, found in A57 test version, in which the theme and the passage are considered not relevant to senior high school students. Therefore, there are only 98.4 of the 123 test tasks being relevant to the learners. The passage, related to the test tasks 28 and 29, is an announcement telling that PT PLN Persero invites eligible bidders for purchasing Carbon Credit from PLN’s Project Using CDM scheme . The passage topic is not relevant with senior high school students’ materials. Besides, the passage uses specific terms related to electrical installation. 75 If the materials are applied to certain vocational school students, this might be relevant. Since the focus on learning English for senior high school students is for daily life communication, even to prepare them in order to continue their study to the higher educational institution. After conducting analysis to the data, the researcher calculated the total number of the test items which qualified for the five authenticity criteria, the researcher put the results into percentage. As the results, the test tasks of reading test items of National Examination year 2012 are 96.7 authentic.

b. The Authenticity of the Test Texts