Employing Applying Level of Thinking Skills

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CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This chapter consists of two main points. First, this chapter presents the summary of the findings and discussion of this research. This chapter summarizes how the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN looks like and the levels of thinking skill which are employed in the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN. Therefore, this chapter summarizes the language skill, the materials and the levels of thinking which are employed in the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN. Second, this chapter gives recommendations to future research and current practice. This chapter gives the recommendations especially to future researchers, English teachers, schools, English UN designers and English Language Education Study Program ELESP students. To be more precise, here are two points about the conclusion and the recommendations.

A. Conclusion

After discussing the research results, the researcher comes to the conclusion. The three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN measures reading skills. It is because the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN consists of reading passages and their following questions. The reading passages include warnings, short messages, greeting cards, 63 invitations, letters, announcements, advertisements, schedules, procedures, descriptive texts, biography, narratives, recounts, reports, word-arrangement texts, sentence-arrangement texts, and filling-gap texts. Besides, there are two types of reading which are integrated in the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN. The types are derived from Brown’s typology of reading tests. The types are selective and interactive reading. The three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN integrates selective reading because there are reading tasks which measures the test takers’ knowledge about English lexicons and grammar. It is showed by the filling-gap texts which 94.6 of the questions measure the test takers’ knowledge about English vocabulary items such as verbs, adverbs, adjectives, nouns and prepositions . Besides, 5.4 of the questions measure the test takers’ knowledge about English tenses like simple past tense. Next, the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN integrates interactive reading which measures reading comprehension. The three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN consists of reading comprehension tasks such as asking main ideas, detail information, inferences, English vocabularies in context, grammar and expressions. Moreover, the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN employs the lowest level of thinking skills. It is because the questions in the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN employ the three levels of thinking namely remembering, understanding and applying. Additionally, there are four behaviors derived from these three levels of thinking which are employed 64 in the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN. They are recognizing, recalling, summarizing and executing. It means that the test takers are supposed to think in the levels which they had to use their memorization in order to answer the questions. Next, the test takers had to be able to make conclusion from the information they get before and apply their procedural knowledge in the new given problems or situations.

B. Recommendations

The analysis of the three consecutive years English UN intended to help five parties as follows.

1. Future Researchers

This research analyzes the three consecutive years English UN for Junior High School. The analysis of this research is based on Brown’s testing theories and Bloom Taxonomy. Therefore, the researcher expects future researchers to analyze other tests which are held in Indonesia. The researcher expects the future researchers use another perspective in analyzing the test items. For example, if the tests assess reading skill, they can analyze the test items based on the text orientations such as language form, content, text structure or genre orientations. Moreover, the future researchers are expected to analyze the levels of thinking skill which are employed in the tests based on the text orientations. For example, the future researchers analyze a reading passage which focuses on genre orientation. They can analyze the questions which follow that passage whether the questions employ the lowest or the highest level of thinking skill. Thus, the future 65 researcher give new contribution related to English language testing in education field.

2. English Teachers

This research obtains how the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN looks like and the levels of thinking skill which are employed in the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN. Therefore, it helps English teachers to have more preparation in facing UN. They can drill their students the materials which usually tested in English UN since their students are in the seventh grade. For example, they can start giving their students reading exercises such as reading comprehension and filling-gap texts. Moreover, English teachers can use the levels of thinking skills employed in the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN as a hint for them to design lesson plans and tests. They can accustom their students to think in the levels of remembering, understanding and applying. Additionally, they can lead their students to think in the higher levels: analyzing, evaluating and creating. Thus, their students are used to think in the higher levels so the students think in the various levels of thinking skills.

3. English UN Designers

Lane 2004 states that a high-stakes test has to prompt complex cognitive thinking which employs various levels of thinking skills. Since the three consecutive years of Junior High School English UN employs only the lowest levels of thinking skills, this research helps the English UN designers to evaluate the English UN items. The English UN designers have to consider the levels of 66 thinking skills to be employed in the test. The English UN can go to the higher levels of thinking skills rather than only focus on the lowest levels of thinking skills.

4. ELESP Students

This research helps ELESP students to learn more about levels of thinking through the analysis of the three-year English UN for Junior High School. Since ELESP students are language teacher candidates, they need to learn about the levels of thinking skill. It is because they have to consider the levels of thinking skill when they are designing lesson plans and tests especially the learning objectives. Moreover, t hey have to consider students’ abilities and age when designing the learning objectives. They have to start employing the lowest thinking skill in the class: remembering, understanding and applying. They have to lead the students to work on the memorization and making concepts first. Then, they lead the students to apply the prior information and concepts in the new problems or situations. After mastering the information and concepts, they lead the students to think in the highest level of thinking: analyzing, evaluating and creating. They lead the students to think more critically. Besides, they lead the students to make judgments on given cases based on the students’ prior information and concepts. Finally, they lead the students to produce works such as writings, speeches, and poems.