Assessing students’ Reading Comprehension through
Multiple Choice and True False Test
Chandra Arnida
Universitas Pendidikan
Indonesia
Email: chandraarnida@yahoo.com
Abstract
Assessing of the student
development in reading comprehension is very important. It is aimed to evaluate how the students
comprehend the text. One way to evaluate student’s reading comprehension by
conducting a test. There are many types of test that can be applied like short
answer, true- false, matching, multiple choices, and essay question etc.
However
based on the data from researcher’s interview with some teachers, they still have problems to decide what kind
of the appropriate format tests to be applied. This study will discuss about
the effective of using multiple choice and true false format in assessing the
students reading comprehension. It will be done to see which one is more
effective in gaining students’ comprehended in reading.
The
sample of this research will be a class of eight grade students in one of the
SMP in Pangkalpinang
Bangka Belitung. There are 235 students as population and 38 students
as a sample of this study that consists of 12 boys and 26 girls.
This study will employ quantitative research in which reading comprehension
test will be used as the data collection techniques. The data in form of
students’ reading comprehension mean scores in both test item formats will be analyzed and compare in
order to find out which one of the two formats is more effective to be used in
assessing students’ reading comprehension, particularly in this class.
Some parts becomes the conclusion of the research: (1)
the multiple choice mean score is higher than the true false; therefore the
multiple choice is the effective way in gaining students’ reading comprehension
in this research site, (2) the correlation between multiple choice and true
false is 0.832 which means that they have positive high correlation, and (3)
Based on the comparison t test and t table it is found that t test is higher
that t table (4.257 > 2.0262). It means that H0 is rejected and H1 is
accepted. It indicates that there is difference result of multiple choice and True False test item
in gaining students’ reading comprehension achievement.
Keywords: assessment, reading comprehension, test,
multiple choice, true false
Abstrak
Menilai perkembangan siswa dalam pemahaman mereka terhadap bacaan
merupakan hal yang sangat penting. Penilaian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui
seberapa paham siswa terhadap bacaan tersebut. Salah satu cara untuk menilai
kemampuan siswa dalam memahami bacaan adalah dengan tes. Ada banyak tipe tes
yang bisa dilakukan sepeti : jawaban singkat, betul atau salah, menjodohkan,
pilihan ganda, pertanyaan essei dan lain lain.
Bagaimanapun juga, berdasarkan data dari hasil interview dengan beberapa
guru, didapatkan hasil bahwa mereka masih mempunyai masalah dalam memutuskan jenis tes yang tepat dalam
mengukur kemampuan anak terhadap
pemahaman bacaan. Penelitian ini membahas seberapa efektif penggunaan pilihan
ganda dan benar atau salah dalam menilai kemampuan tersebut. Penelitian ini
juga bermaksud untuk melihat tes mana yang lebih efektif dalam mendapatkan
nilai anak terhadap pemahaman bacaan
tersebut.
Sampel dari penelitian ini adalah murid kelas delapan dari salah satu
sekolah menengah pertama (SMP) negeri di Pangkalpinang Bangka Belitung. Jumlah
murid kelas delapan keseluruhan adalah 235 sebagai populasi dan 38 murid
sebagai sampel dari penelitian ini. Mereka terdiri dari 12 orang anak laki
laki, dan 26 orang perempuan. Penelitian ini adalah penelitian quantitative,
yang menggunakan ujian reading comprehension sebagai teknik pengumpulan
datanya. Data yang didapat dari hasil mean skor kedua tes tersebut dianalisa
untuk melihat bentuk tes mana yang lebih efektif yang digunakan dalam
mendapatkan nilai pemahaman bacaan siswa, khususnya di kelas yang diteliti ini.
Kesimpulan dari penelian ini menghasilkan ( 1) rata-rata hasil test yang
menggunakan format pilihan ganda lebih tinggi dibanding rata rata tes yang
menggunakan format betul atau salah. Jadi format tes pilihan ganda adalah cara yang lebih baik
dalam penelitian ini. (2) korrelasi
antara pilihan ganda dan betul salah
pada penelitian ini adalah 0.832, ini berarti bahwa ada positif korelasi yang cukup tinggi antara kedua format tes tersebut, dan (3)
berdasarkan hasil perbandingan T-test and T-table, ditemukan bahwa T-test lebih tinggi dibanding T-table (4.257 > 2.0262). ini berarti
bahwa H0 ditolak dan H1 diterima. Ini mencerminkan bahwa ada perbedaan hasil
dari tes dengan format pilihan ganda dengan format betul salah dalam melihat
nilai kemampuan siswa terhadap pemahaman mereka dalam membaca.
Keywords: assessment, reading comprehension, test,
multiple choice, true false
Introduction
Assessment
is a part of language teaching. Based on Miller (2009: 26) assessment is a
systematic process that plays a significant role in effective teaching which
begins with the identification of learning goals, monitors the progress
students made toward those goals and ends with the judgment concerning the
extent to which those goals have been attained
There are many ways in
assessing student’s ability in language teaching. Testing is one of the part of
it. tests are
simply instruments or procedures for gathering particular kinds of information,
typically information having to do with students’ language abilities. Tests
may have a variety of formats, lengths, item types, scoring criteria, and
media. Miller et al.
(2009:139) state that the main goal of
classroom testing and assessment is to obtain valid, reliable, and useful
information concerning student achievement.
Aside of
measuring the student’s ability, The language
tests also use to
influence or wash back on what and how the teachers
teach; make selection decisions for entrance into universities; and certify
that students have achieved a particular standard of language ability.
Some objectives are stated as broad, general, long-range goals, e.g., ability
to exercise the mental
functions of reasoning, imagination,
critical appreciation. These educational objectives are too general to be
measured by classroom tests and need to be operationally defined by the class teacher.
There are some differentiate among language test types according to such
characteristics and the information provided by each. Within the
language classroom that
is used tests to
diagnose areas of learner need or sources of learning difficulties, reflect on
the effectiveness of materials and activities, encourage student involvement
in the learning process, track learner development in the L2, and provide
students with feedback about their language learning progress for further
classroom-based applications of language tests (Brown 1998; Cohen 1994).
The basic objective of an educational achievement
test is to assess the desired changes
brought
about by the teaching-learning process. Obviously, each subject demands a different set of instructional
objectives are: knowledge, understanding, application and skill. On the other hand the major
objectives of a language course are: knowledge, comprehension
and expression. Knowledge objective is considered to be the lowest level of learning whereas understanding,
application of knowledge in sciences / behavior sciences is considered higher levels of
learning
Moreover in writing objectives test the teachers follow the Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.Bloom’s
Taxonomy classifies instructional objectives into three major domains-cognitive, affective,
and psychomotor. The largest proportion of educational objectives falls
into the cognitive domain.Bloom’s taxonomy
classifies behaviors included in cognitive domain into the following categories: knowledge,comprehension, application, analysis, synthesi,
evaluation.
Multiple Choice
Multiple-choice (MC) item is one
of the most popular item formats used in educational assessment. A multiple choice item consists of a problem and a list of
suggestion solutions. The problem may be stated. The advantage of multiple
choice are easy to administer and score (Brown 2010: 295). Based on Wikipedia Multiple
choice is a form of assessment
in which respondents
are asked to select the best possible answer (or answers) out of the choices
from a list.
The multiple choice item is the most versatile type of
test item available. It can measure a variety of learning outcomes from simple
to complex, and it is adaptable to most types subject- matter content. It has
such wide applicability and so many uses that many standardized tests use
multiple choice items exclusively.
A typical multiple choice item has three parts: a stem that
presents a problem; the correct or best
answer;
and several distractors (i.e., the wrong or less appropriate options). Multiple choice
items can be constructed to assess a variety of learning outcomes, from simple
recall of facts to
Bloom’s highest taxonomic level of cognitive skills – evaluation (Osterlind,
1998). It is common knowledge
that the correct answers should be distributed evenly among the alternative positions
of multiple choice
items, but there are many other important guidelines for writing good items.
For example, Haladyna
(1999) describes 30 guidelines for writing multiple choice items.
Related to the
multiple choice test item and reading comprehension, Heaton (1995: 117) states
that multiple choice test offers a useful way of testing reading comprehension.
Certain general aspects of many reading tests may be suspect, for instance,
does the usual brief extract for reading comprehension. The extract should also
be related to its level of difficulty.
True false
Another language test format
used in education assessment is true false format.
Most
common use of the true-false item is in measuring the examinee’s ability to
identify the
correctness
of statements of fact, definitions of terms, statements of principles and distinguish fact from opinion. True-false tests include numerous
opinion statements to which the examinee is asked to respond true or false. There is no
objective basis for determining whether a statement of opinion is true or false. In most
situations, when a student is the respondent, s/he guesses what opinion the teacher holds and
marks the answers accordingly. This, of course, is not desirable from all standpoints,
testing, teaching, and learning.
An alternative procedure is to attribute the opinion to some
source, making it possible to mark the statements true or false with some objectivity. This would
allow measuring knowledge concerning the beliefs that may be held by an individual or the
values supported by an organization or institution. Another aspect of understanding
that can be measured by the true-false item is the ability to recognize cause-and-effect
relationships. This type of item usually contains two true propositions in one statement, and
the examinee is to judge whether the relationship between
them is true or false.
A major
advantage of true false items is that are efficient. Students can typically
respond to roughly three true false items in the time. It takes to respond to
two multiple choice items (Ebel & frisbie, 1991). Proponents of true false
items such as Ebel and Frisbie (1991) argue that verbal knowledge is central to
educational achievement and that “all verbal knowledge can be expressed I
propositions” which can be judged to be true or false (p135). They make a
strong case that true false items have utility for measuring a broad range of
verbal knowledge.
In constructing
the true false item test, Miller (2009: 184) suggested some consideration in
arranging true false items test. First, avoid broad general statement, avoid
trivial statement, avoid the negative statement, avoid long complete sentence,
avoid including two idea s in one statement, if opinion is used attribute it in
some sources, true statement and false statement should be approximately equal
in length. The number of true statements and false statements should be
approximately equal.
Reading
comprehension
Some experts
have been introduced some concepts of reading. They have looked at reading from
different perspectives, approaches, and purposes. Most of the concepts reflect
the ideas to search meaning. Reading is defined as reacting to a written text
as a piece of communication. By reading people can assume some communicative
intent on the writer’s part which the reader has some purpose in attempting to
understand (Wallace, 1992:4 Gebhard 1999: 197)). This means that the way of
people perceive reading behavior is linked to different reader purposes that
are linked to situation context and also their social expectation. According to
Alexander (1989: 12), reading is interactive process in which a reader’s prior
knowledge of the subject and purpose for reading operate to influence what is
learning from the text.
Reading
comprehension is defined as a process in which the reader constructs meaning
and interacts with text trough combination of prior knowledge and previous
experience, information in the text, the stance she or he takes in relationship
to the text, and immediate, remembered, or anticipated social interaction and
communication (Rudell, et, Al 1994).In reading the reader need to comprehend
the text. This is in line with Smith 1994, 53 in Gebhard 1999, 197 states that comprehension may be regarded as
relating what we attend to in the world around us – the visual information of
print in the case of reading to what we already have in our heads as a
consequence of attending to the world around us. In addition, reading
comprehension involves taking meaning to text in order to obtain meaning from
the text (Turner cited in Alexander 1988). As a conclusion, reading
comprehension is an active process between the reader and the text. In this
case the readers have to connect the ideas of the text they have already read
and the process of constructing meaning from the text.
Connecting with
the comprehension, Sadeghi (2007) states there are two factors which may
influence reading comprehension, namely internal and external factors. The
internal factors relates to reader variable. This refer to everything related
the reader. For example his/her background knowledge, cognitive abilities and
strategies, and affective characteristics. While the external factors refers to
text variable, context variable and writer variable.
Reading
comprehension involves taking meaning, Davis (1968 in Alderson 2000:9)
identifies eight skills in comprehend
the text. There are (1) recalling word meaning; (2) drawing inferences about
the meaning of a word in context; (3) finding answers to questions answered
explicitly or in paraphrase;(4) weaving together ideas in the content;(5)
drawing inferences from the content; (6) recognizing a writer’s purpose,
attitude, tone and mood; (7) identifying a writer’s technique;(8) following the
structure of a passage.
Methodology
This
study employed
the
quantitative research. Regarding the
quantitative research, this study collects data and analyzes the data obtained
from test. Dornyei (2007: 102) and Cresswell (2008 :54) argue that the
quantitative are gathered to measure and
find out what participants think about the variable. The statement is relevant
to this study in the research. The tests are employed to measure the student’s
comprehension to the reading text.
This study was conducted in one of the junior high school in
Pangkalpinang Bangka Belitung the
population of the research area the eight grade students in that school. The sample of
this study is class 8A which consists of
12 boys and 26 girls.
In line
with the research design employed and the topic of the study, the data
collection technique used is in form of reading comprehension ability test. Emilia
(2011:12) reported that test is usually administered at the beginning of the
research before the implementation of a teaching program and at the end of the
program to test the effectiveness of the program or a technique used.
There are
many kinds of test items format, particularly those which can be used in
assessing students’ reading comprehension ability. Brown (2010:224-258) listed
and explained some of them; multiple choice, cloze task, impromptu reading plus
comprehension, short answer tasks, and so on. In addition, Heaton
(1988:113-133) also mentioned and elaborated some of the test item format that
can be applied in assessing reading comprehension ability. Some of them are
True/False reading test, multiple choice items, completion items, rearrangement
items, cloze procedure, and open ended and miscellaneous items. In this study,
the writer conducted two kinds of test item formats. They were multiple choice
and true false.
The
data
got from students’ reading
comprehension mean scores in both test item formats such as multiple choice
test items and true false test items. They are analyzed
and compared in order to find
out which one of the two formats is more effective to be used in assessing
students’ reading comprehension, particularly in the research site.
The hypothesis is as follow:
H0 = There is no difference result of multiple choice and True False
test item in gaining students’ reading comprehension achievement
H1 = There is difference result of multiple choice and True False test
item in gaining students’ reading comprehension achievement
Finding and Discussion
As it was
mentioned before there were two kinds of data which were used in this study.
First data collected through multiple choice tests and the second data
collected through true false test. The test materials are in the form of
reading material which consists of thirty items each of them. After conducting
the test, the result of the data were analyzed by
using IBM SPSS Statistics Ver. 22.the data analyzed in order to find out
whether assessing students reading comprehension by using the multiple choice
is more effective than using true false test.
Table 1
|
Paired
Samples Statistics
|
|||||
|
|
Mean
|
N
|
Std.
Deviation
|
Std.
Error Mean
|
|
|
Pair 1
|
MC
|
81,8684
|
38
|
9,29159
|
1,50729
|
|
T/F
|
77,7632
|
38
|
10,70851
|
1,73715
|
|
Table 1 shows that the mean score of multiple choice
is 81.86, standard deviation 9.2915, and the standard error mean is 1.50729
meanwhile, the mean score of true false is 77.7632, standard deviation 10.70851
and the standard error mean is 1.73715. This data indicates that the multiple
choice mean score is higher than the true false; therefore the multiple choice
is the effective way in gaining students’ reading comprehension in this
research site.
Table 2
|
Paired
Samples Correlations
|
||||
|
|
N
|
Correlation
|
Sig.
|
|
|
Pair 1
|
MC & T/F
|
38
|
,832
|
,000
|
In table 2 describe that the correlation between
multiple choice and true false test is 0,832. Lazaraton (1991) says that the
correlation lies in range between 1 and -1, in this research the correlation
between multiple choice and true false is 0.832 which means that they have
positive high correlation.
Table 3
|
Paired
Samples Test
|
|||||||||
|
|
Paired
Differences
|
T
|
df
|
Sig.
(2-tailed)
|
|||||
|
Mean
|
Std.
Deviation
|
Std.
Error Mean
|
95%
Confidence Interval of the Difference
|
||||||
|
Lower
|
Upper
|
||||||||
|
Pair 1
|
VAR00001 - VAR00002
|
4,10526
|
5,94474
|
,96436
|
2,15127
|
6,05925
|
4,257
|
37
|
,000
|
The result of
computation described on table 3 indicates that the T test is 4,257, while the
T-table at significance level of 0.05, with the degree of freedom 37 is 2.0262.
It indicates that the T-test is higher than T-table (T-test >T-table).
Moreover the mean of paired difference is 4.10526. Overall,
the results reported here clearly reveal that there are significant differences between mean achieved by the multiple choice test items rather
than true false test items.
The results show that in case of this particular
group of learners using
multiple choice in gaining student’s reading comprehension test was
able to help the EFL students a better comprehend and higher score in their test.
Based on the comparison t test and t table it is found that t test is
higher that t table (4.257 > 2.0262). It means that H0 is rejected and H1 is
accepted. It indicates that there is difference result of multiple choice and True
False test item in gaining students’ reading comprehension achievement
Conclusion
The present study is aimed to investigate the effectiveness of using
multiple choices in reading comprehension assessment. The data got by using
reading comprehension test in two format item tests. There are multiple choice
and true false items test. Some parts becomes the conclusion of the research:
(1) the multiple choice mean score is higher than the true false; therefore the
multiple choice is the effective way in gaining students’ reading comprehension
in this research site, (2) the correlation between multiple choice and true
false is 0.832 which means that they have positive high correlation, and (3)
Based on the comparison t test and t table it is found that t test is higher
that t table (4.257 > 2.0262). It means that H0 is rejected and H1 is
accepted. It indicates that there is difference result of multiple choice and True
False test item in gaining students’ reading comprehension achievement.
In conclusion,
it is found that by using multiple choice test items is more effective than
using true false test items that had been tested to the student. The
results show that in case of this particular group of learners using multiple choice in doing testing at reading
comprehension was able to help better comprehend the students’ comprehension in
reading text. Although
this study is small-scale and its results cannot be easily generalized, the writer believes that the present study can be of
significance for a number of reasons
Recommendation
Based on the finding and conclusion, it was proved that the multiple
choice item test is significantly help the students in answering the reading
comprehension test. So that writer recommend to the teacher or the test maker
arranging the test in the multiple choice form in assessing reading
comprehension.
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