Developing An English Phonics Test (EPT) for Elementary Schools in New Taipei City

• Main Authors: Cheng-Wei Chung, 鍾正威
• Other Authors: Ping-Huang Sheu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/69323251281321125496

碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 兒童英語教育學系碩士班 === 103 === This study aimed to develop an English phonics test (EPT) with good degrees of reliability and validity for elementary school students in New Taipei City. There were two sections in this English Phonics Test: phonological awareness test and phonemic awareness test. In terms of the research purposes, based on New Taipei City English curriculum outline, this test was created. In addition, the subjects in this study were the sixth grade students in New Taipei City. According to the testing results of the English Phonics Test, the researcher adopted the quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate if this test was equipped with the good testing qualities. A test with good testing quality means this test is equipped with good reliability, validity, index of difficulty, and index of discrimination. The results of this study were as below: 1. Reliability: Cronbach’s alpha was 0.895 for the syllable awareness and onset-rime awareness section, and it was 0.934 for the phoneme awareness section. Since the value was higher than 0.8 for both sections, and it was 0.937 for the test on the whole (See Appendix H), this EPT is proven to have internal consistency. 2. Validity: The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was used in this study to examine the relationship of the scoring for each test question to the average scoring for each section of the test in order to understand the consistency of scoring. Correlation coefficient was 0.871 for the syllable awareness and onset-rime awareness section, and it was 0.927 for the phonemic awareness section. Both of these P-values were significant as they show the EPT items and content were consistent and showed a significantly positive correlation. 3. Index of difficulty: The average index of difficulty for this test was 0.639, which showed that the degree of difficulty was medium to easy. 4. Index of discrimination: The average index of discrimination for the items in this test was 0.545 which showed that the index of discrimination of this test was good.