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cited in Day, 2003, p.4. The statement indicates that authentic texts’ purpose is
mainly for communication. It aims not focusing on teaching grammatical forms. Brown 2004 adds in listening items authenticity points up dialogues or
monologues spoken by native speakers which represent conversations happen in the real-life p.28. It indicates that to achieve authenticity, natural language use is
important such as in listening test there should be hesitations, white noise, and interruptions.
B. Theoretical Framework
A language test is a systematic method to measure one’s capability,
knowledge, or performance in a certain domain in its relation with the language use. In order to meet usefulness of a language test, the test should meet a good
test’s criteria, for instance: reliability, validity, practicality, and authenticity Brown, 2004. Therefore, the language test should be high quality since it is a
measurement o f students’ capability. One of the types of language tests is English
test of National Examination. McNamara 2000 states that in terms of methods, National Examination is a kind of paper-and-pencil language tests written test.
Paper-and-pencil language tests belong to receptive tests because they test somebody’s receptive skills such as listening and reading skills. In terms of test
purposes, National Examination is categorized into achievement tests McNamara, 2000. As an achievement test, National Examination corresponds to
the classroom lessons, units, or curriculum Brown, 2004. The bases of composing National Examination are the Competence Standard, Basic
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Competence, and test specifications which are incorporated in Graduate Competence Standard. In order to meet the usefulness as an assessing tool,
language test such as National Examination should meet principles of language assessment. There are two criteria which the researcher focuses on, namely
content validity and authenticity. A valid listening test is a test where the content is composed based on the
blueprints. If the topics are relevant with the test specifications, the listening test is valid Brown, 2004. A valid reading test is a test where the content is
composed based on the blueprints. If the topics are relevant with the test specifications, the reading test is valid. Content validity is important to be
considered due to the effectiveness of the test. If a language test does not meet content validity it probably affects the student
s’ capability to perform the intended skill and the students are probably not capable to answer the test questions Seif,
2004. Therefore, it is important to check content validity of language tests. In order to check the validity of language test, the test-designers or teachers are able
to check it by matching the test items with the relevant test specifications and lesson objectives.
Authenticity is one of the important language assessment facets since it resemble how the language test show the real-world tasks and true language use
Richards, 2001. In addition, authentic materials which are used will give advantages for the learners since authentic materials perform the true language in
context and they help students by providing appropriate information about the target language Richards, 2001. In order to be determined as an authentic
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assessment, National Examination test-designers should consider two important parts of authenticity namely test task characteristics and test text characteristics
Bachman and Palmer, 1996. Task characteristics include five aspects namely the naturalness of test
language, the contextualized items represented in the test, the relevance of the test topics and the learners, the existence of some thematic organization items, and the
representativeness of the world tasks Brown, 2004. Those five aspects refer to the quality of the test tasks in reading and listening tests. The naturalness of test
language in reading test items consists of linguistic aspects namely typography, lexis, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The naturalness of test language show
the appropriateness of the test language to the target language. The target language use of the English test on National Examination is
American English and British English. It is because American English and British English becomes international language which is as means of communication
spoken by most of people throughout the world. Meanwhile, the naturalness of test language refers to the existence of hesitations, white noise, and interruptions
in listening tests Brown, 2004. The contextualization of the test items refers to the test items organizations which is related to the existence of some thematic
organization items. Another indicator is relevance of the test topics and the learners which has meaning that the materials should be appropriate to learners.
The last indicator is that the tasks should represent the real-world tasks which means that authentic materials are taken from real-world sources.
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Besides the test tasks, the test text characteristics become important in order to achieve authenticity and the text characteristics adapt the five indicators
of test authenticity. There are three indicators used to check authenticity of reading texts namely the naturalness of test language, the relevance of the test
topics and the learners, and the representativeness of the world tasks. Authenticity is a matter of appropriateness of the content and construction
of both test tasks and test texts. It is important to be considered in composing language test due to its benefits by performing the true language in context and
providing appropriate information about the target language Richards, 2001. Authentic materials are not used to teach grammar or language discourse,
however, it shows genuine and reliable language Richards, 2001. After learning certain language using authentic materials, students are expected not to be
confused of using the language. Therefore, if the English items of listening and reading sections of 2012 National Examination meet the criteria on both task
characteristics and text characteristics, the test is considered as a relatively high authentic test.
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CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, the researcher discusses the research methodology. It consists of six parts: research method, research participants, research instruments,
data gathering techniques, data analysis techniques, and research procedures. Each part would be explained in details as follows.
A. Research Method
This research belongs to qualitative research since McRoy et al. 1988 defines qualitative research is a kind of research which is focused on non-
statistical methods and analysis of social phenomena. Qualitative research uses detailed descriptions from the perspective of the research participants as means to
examine specific issues and problems under study. It means that through qualitative inquiry, the researcher conducts analysis of the research participants on
their natural setting without any manipulation on the data variable. According to Myers 1997, the data of qualitative research are in a form of descriptive data not
in a form of numbers as cited in Hunt, n.d., p.2. Related to qualitative research, particularly, a descriptive data of some
certain documents is utilized. If there are numbers in the research discussion, the numbers are used as further explanation of the research findings in order to make
the explanation clearer. The research is conducted with descriptive analysis because it shares measurement of documents rather than prediction. This study is
