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C. Other Findings
The implementation of National Examination year 2012 was similar to the implementation of National Examination year 2013. The test items were
composed into various sets of test items. In year 2012, Indonesian Education Ministry implemented five test versions of test items of National Examination
whereas in year 2013, Indonesian Education Ministry implemented much more test versions 20 kinds of test versions. The goal of applying different kinds of
test version in National Examination was to clamp down on students’ fraudulence in the implementation of National Examination. Muhammad Nuh, the chairman of
Indonesian Education Ministry, Tempo Tuesday, 11 September 2012 explains this was related to government’s plan in order to integrate the score of National
Examination as an instrument to select university-student candidates. On the contrary, other people agree that the test designers should consider
some aspects in conducting testing in varying the test compositions of National Examination. Elin Driana, an observer in educational field, Tempo Tuesday, 11
September 2012, states all those various test versions should have the same quality of difficulties. Besides that, validity, reliability, and unbiased test items
became important aspects to be considered. From the pre-analysis, the researcher found out interesting results. It was related to the variation of the test tasks and
test passages which table 4.4 shows there were three similar passages and test questions used in all five test versions. The passages were about A Message to Mr.
Anwar, A Cap Seller, and Laskar Pelangi as well as the test tasks of numbers 16, 21, 22, 45, and 46 in each test version.
78 Another sample of the similar passages and test tasks was revealed in A57
and C71 with topic about smoking, the similar test tasks were on test items numbers 39, 40, 41. The similar passages and the test tasks are found in numbers
28 and 29 in test version A57 which have similarity with either the passage or the test tasks in E45. The most interesting findings are that most of the passages and
the test tasks in test version C71 are similar to the passages in test version D32. The difference between both test versions is only found in the test item numbers
39, 40, 41 of both test version since the passages used in each test version, related to those three questions, are different. The findings indicates a mismatch between
the Education Ministry’s objectives to apply several test versions in National Examination and the facts founded in reading test items of National Examination
year 2012.
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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter presents the conclusions of this research and recommendation. The first part is conclusion of the research to answer the research question. The
second part is recommendations for English teachers, test designers of National Examination and future researchers who have similar interest in conducting
research in English language tests.
A. Conclusions
This research obtains two main results to answer the research problems stated in the first chapter. First, how valid is the content of English test items of
National Examination year 2012 for senior high schools related to the lesson objectives and the test specifications? Second, how authentic is English test items
of National Examination year 2012 for senior high schools related to the criteria of authenticity set by Brown?
The researcher conducted document analysis to get data in order to answer two research problems as stated above. The instruments of collecting data which
were utilized in this research were checklists. The checklists were divided into five kinds of checklists. The first checklist is utilized to ensure the content validity
of the test specifications. The second checklist is to check content validity of English test items, both listening and reading test, of National Examination year
2012 for senior high schools based on test specifications. The third checklist is
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