Abstract:

The Slovak school-leaving examinations in English are offered to Slovak secondary-school leavers at three levels related to B1, B2 and C1 according to the CEFR. These external measurements are provided by the National Institute for Certified Educational Measurements in Slovakia and students’ achievements are presented officially in percentage and percentile. Those who tend to complete secondary grammar schools are obliged to sit B2 tests in English.

The aim of our study is to analyse B2 tests in English developed in the course of five years (2015-2019) and compare the results of the students achieved in these tests. Since official statistics of any measurements focus more on the characteristics of a test, four main features will be discussed in our study, emphasising the concepts of reliability and validity.

However, item analysis provides a lot of information about the quality of the items and of the test as a whole and is important for increasing item-writers’ abilities and skills in test construction. Therefore, the analysis provided in our study will be based on our experience as an item-writer engaged in developing English tests for the purposes of external measurements.

Due to the fact that the test consists of three parts such as listening comprehension, reading comprehension and language in use, the main focus of our analysis will be shifted towards the problems of items in the section of language in use as the distribution of the scores achieved in this section tends to be symmetrical in contrast with the distribution of scores in listening and reading sections.

The study will identify specific areas of test content providing recommendations for students to devote systematic attention to language learning and for language teachers to put greater emphasis on the purposes for which language is used.

Keywords:

English tests, CEFR level B2, statistics, item-analysis.