Análisis de ítems para prueba de clasificación en inglés en una universidad colombiana

Abstract

This article reports the results of a research project in which the difficulty index (IF) and discrimination index (ID) were measured in an English placement test designed by and for a Colombian public university. The test was made up of a grammar and vocabulary section, an oral comprehension section and a written comprehension section. The measurement of the indexes allowed categorizing excellent, acceptable and defective items for their subsequent correction or discard. The results of the study suggest that the items found to be defective correspond to question with poor distractors and with problems of ambiguity in the instruction; likewise, the study confirms the lack of language assessment literacy (LAL) among foreign language teachers and suggests the need for explicit training in item design.