Background of Study INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

English is a tool of communication to get information and it can be used in formal education as academic subject matter. In the global era, English is increasingly needed because it is one of the International languages mostly used in the world. English as an International language has an important role in any sphere of activities to be used as a means of communication both written and spoken, so English language becomes the first foreign language that should be taught to English students for every level of education in Indonesia. English is taught as a compulsory subject in elementary, junior and senior high schools, and as a complementary subject in university. The purpose of teaching English in Indonesia is to develop the communication skills especially in oral and written skills listening, speaking, reading, and writing. To reach the purpose the instructional activities, the teacher apply evaluation to measure how far the students understand about the material. One of the most important aspects of teaching learning process is evaluation. It contributes directly to the teaching and learning process used in classroom instruction. The main focus of classroom evaluation is the students and their learning process. To measure the stud ent‟s skill in the teaching - learning process, the teacher need to hold an evaluation. Evaluation plays an important role in teaching learning activities. It is an integral part of the instructional program. Through evaluation, teachers can find out the effectiveness or the failure of a method and curriculum, and also student‟s achievement in mastering the lesson efficiency. It is considered that between teachings and testing cannot be separated. Teachers are those who know the characteristics of their classes. Thus, they are the best position to construct a test to measure their students‟ achievement and it is not an easy job. Some teachers make the test carelessly. The test that is made accordingly can help teacher increasing the teaching - learning process. High quality test can give the information about how well the students have comprehended the material, which has been taught by the teacher. By having a test, the improvement in the next lesson planning can be upgraded. So, teaching – learning process will be more effective without any overlapping. Evaluation can be done in the form of test. This test can be a teacher-made test or standardized test. In the teacher-made test, the teacher, who make the test should know and master the principles and the steps that must be done in making the test. By this knowledge the teachers will get a clear figure about the general systematic framework of evaluation. One of the form s to evaluate the student‟s ability is test. There are numerous types of test. There are placement test, achievement test, proficiency test and aptitude test. The test which is usually used by teacher to know how far students have mastered the lessons is the achievement test. The achievement test is intended to establish how successful individual students groups of students or the courses themselves have been in achieving objectives of language courses. 1 1 Arthur Hughes, Testing for Langeage Teacher, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press., 1995, p.10 There are two kinds of achievement test: progress achievement tests and final achievement tests. 2 progress achievement are those intended to measure the progress that student are making and final achievement tests or summative tests are intended to measure the s tudents‟ achievement at the end of a course of study. In order to measure accurately, the teachers should use a good test. It is not an easy work for them to make it because there are some characteristics or requirements that must be fulfilled. The characteristics of a good test include validity, reliability, objectivity, and practicality. 3 Validity is the most important consideration in test evaluation. The concept refers to the appropriateness, meaning, and usefulness of the specific inferences made from the score. Test validation is the process of accumulating evidence to support such inference. The former types of validity content, criterion related, and construct are simply considered to be convenient categories for accumulating evidence to support the validity of an interpretation. 4 Content validity is most often addressed in academic and vocational testing, where test items need to reflect the knowledge actually required for a given topic area. In SMP N 87 Jakarta English summative test is settled as one of the most important aspects that can be used as the tools of evaluation to measure the students ability whether the students have achieved the learning target or not. Since the English summative test will become the standing point of student ability in English so this test will be very important to be analyzed. Because if the test isn‟t valid we can say that the test can not used as the tools of measurement. The writer focus the observation on the 7th grade student in this school. The writer focuses the observation of the English summative test in the 7th grade because 7th garde is the beginning class of junior high school where the 2 Arthur Hughes, Testing for…p.10 3 Sudijono Anas, Pengantar Evaluasi Pendidikan, Jakarta: PT. Raja Grafindo Persada, 1996, p.93 4 Gronlund Norman E. How to Make Achievement Tests and Assessment. ... p. 160 teacher can get the general information about the students ability as whole by knowing the valid information about the 7th grade student‟s ability might help the teacher to find the suitable steps in treating students in class. From the reason above the writer conclude that this research is very important to be done because the English summative test in SMP N 87 Jakarta is oriented to measure the students ability whether the target of learning has been achieved or not. The teacher in this school also use the result of the English summative test in 7th grade as the standing point of view in treating the students for the next level. If these purpose of this test can not give the valid information so the test is also not valid. Based on the reason explaned above the writer is curlous whether “is there any content validity in English summative test for 7th grade students of SMP N 87 Jakarta?” From the problem above, the writer is interested in carry out the research related to how evaluate the content validity of the test items and the agreement between the summative tests with the curriculum. She will carry out the research for her “skripsi” in SMP N 87 Jakarta. Entitle: “AN ANALYSIS ON THE CONTENT VALIDITY OF THE ENGLISH SUMMATIVE TEST FOR THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL A CASE STUDY OF SMP N 87 JAKARTA ”.

B. Statement of the Problem