Academic Centrehttps://doi.org/10.22364/htqe.2024.27 | 351-363 | PDF
Comparing the Difficulty of Texts Used in Latvian and Hungarian School-Leaving Examinations in English as a Foreign Language
Gábor Szabó
University of Pécs, Hungary
Abstract
Examinations in public education are supposed to guarantee that students’ performances are measured using the same standards from exam period to exam period. One important element of guaranteeing the same standards is the use of materials that present the same degree of challenge to candidates in different examinations. In the assessment of foreign language proficiency, such materials primarily include target language texts.
This study offers a comparative analysis of the difficulty of texts used in the reading comprehension section of the school-leaving examinations of the past five years in English as a foreign language in Latvia, along with a comparative analysis of texts used for a similar purpose in Hungary in the same time period. The study examines how stable the difficulty of texts has been across the years, with special regard to the recent changes in the structure of the Latvian exam, along with a comparison of text difficulties and intended exam levels across the two countries. Text difficulty is examined in light of the Coh-Metrix Common Core Text Ease and Readability Assessor (TERA) measures, and similarities and differences are measured by means of applying statistical tests for significant differences. Findings indicate that text clusters from exams targeting the same level showed no significant differences in text difficulty measures; however, in the majority of cases, text clusters from exams targeting different levels showed no significant differences in text difficulty measures either. Thus, further research is needed in order to establish whether the required differences in difficulty were appropriately present in terms of the tasks to be performed by candidates.
Keywords: school-leaving exam, language assessment, text difficulty, foreign language education, maintaining standards.
Author note
The publication of this paper was made possible by the generous support of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Pécs.
In: Human, Technologies and Quality of Education, 2024. Proceedings of Scientific Papers = Cilvēks, tehnoloģijas un izglītības kvalitāte, 2024. Rakstu krājums. Ed. L. Daniela. Riga: University of Latvia, 2024. 564 p.
ISBN 978-9934-36-301-6
https://doi.org/10.22364/htqe.2024