AN ITEM BANK DEVELOPMENT TO INCLUDE TEST ITEMS ASSESSING ORTHOGRAPHIC AND PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING SKILLS AT THE FACULTY OF NURSING

Abstract

In recent years, the importance of assessing students’ orthographic and phonological processing skills has been acknowledged, especially in L1 reading. Moreover, the development of an item bank for an in-house English placement test would enable faculty to assign students to appropriate English-language classes, which in turn would likely lead to students’ successful completion of English-language programs in the tertiary-level institution. Little has been reported, however, on the L2/FL reading contexts. This study thus investigated the process of developing an item bank with orthographic and phonological processing skills for the Faculty of Nursing. The study involved identification of the orthographic and phonological features of the faculty’s English curriculum and materials. It also explored the orthographic and phonological features of two commercially produced English proficiency tests, the TOEFL and the TOEIC, and determined whether these tests correspond to the Faculty of Nursing curriculum requirements. The study also used Rasch analysis to validate the development of test items to assess orthographic and phonological skills, and explored whether these test items correspond to the requirements of the faculty’s English curriculum.

Analysis of the faculty’s curriculum and the commercially produced English proficiency tests revealed that the two tests may not be appropriate tools to measure students’ orthographic and phonological processing skills. The Rasch analysis— including separation, reliability, test targeting, and unidimensionality for a total of 147 items—yielded 90 equated test items. Moreover, the test items showed sufficient spreads: 9 (10%) were grouped at the beginner level, 74 (82%) at the intermediate level, and 7 (8%) at the advanced level.