An evaluation on the 1989-1990 English UUB items for the third year senior high school student in Surabaya

A study' to analyse the items of the English UUB through the index of item difficulty, item discriminating power and the effectiveness of dictactors Throughout the school year, test has been an integral part of classroom activities. It has been directed to make judgements about the student's progress toward prescribed goals & objectives and the effectiveness of activities to facilitate students’ learning. Because of those reason's both teaching and testing are so closely related that it is impossible for teachers to work in either field without being concerned with the other. Based on the test-maker point of view, there are two kinds of tests teacher-made test and standardized test. Standarizied test are test which are prepared by profesional testing services to assist institutions in the selection, placement and evaluation of students, like UUB test. While teacher-made tests are tests which are prepared, administered and scored by one teacher. The English summative test is one of the teacher-made tests in the high schools. While in 1988-1990 the summative test was replaced by the UUB which belonged to the standardized tests. The English UUB was used as standard and was based on the syllabus at the High school. To be considered as a measure of the extent of the students' achievement in the English subject at the Senior High School, it should fulfil the criteria of a good test.To be considered as a good test, it should fulfil many requirements; some of them are the criteria of level of difficulty, discriminating power and the effectiveness of the distractors. Thus, the purpose of this study - which is entitled AN EVALUATION ON THE 1989-1990 ENGLISH UUB ITEMS FOR THE THIRD YEAR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN SURABAYA-is to know whether the test items of the 1989-1990 UUB could be considered as good items from the point of view of their level of difficulty, discriminating power and the effectiveness of the distractors. The instruments which have been analyzed are the answer sheets of the English UUB done by 32 third year students of the A3 program of SMAK St. Stanislaus Surabaya. Having done the analysis, the writer found that: 1. Of the forty items, 11 items (.28) had an undesirable index of difficulty 2. Of the forty items, 21 items (.53) had a poor discrimination index 3. In terms of effectiveness of distractors, 30 items had ineffective dictactors 4. Of the four subtests, the structure test was the least acceptable (.00), followed by conversation (.14) and reading(.30) tests. While the vocabulary test was the most acceptable(.46