Content Validity of EFL Teacher-Made Assessment: The Case of Communicative English Skills Course at Ambo University

Abstract

Prompted by increased concerns about the effects of mismatch between assessments and the teaching materials, this study evaluated the content validity of teacher-made assessments of Communicative English Skills Course at Ambo University. To this end, three years (2016, 2017 and 2018) teacher-made assessments and teaching materials of the course were purposively selected. In addition to the documents, twelve English language teachers and nine English major students were purposively included. In the view of a mixed research design, both quantitative and qualitative data were obtained through document analysis, and teachers and students interview techniques. The document analysis focused on six language domains in the course such as writing, listening, reading, speaking, grammar and vocabulary. The interview focused on the challenges that the teachers confronted and the strategies they used to promote the positive effects of content validity of their assessments in the course. Percentage, Mean Ranking and Pearson Sidney Siegel’s Contingency Coefficient were employed to analyze the quantitative data. The qualitative information was also thematically described. The overall result of the study showed that the content validity of the teacher-made assessments was very low (0.211) which in turn reveals negative effects of the assessments on the teaching-learning process of the course. Complex components and demanding nature of the course, student character, constraints and malfunctioned resources as well as teachers’ behaviour were the major challenges to properly implement assessment in the course. Therefore, the solution to the problem lies in bringing about improvement on these challenges.