The types and Nature of questions vis-à-vis Students‟ test- taking skills as significant Indicators of second language examinees‟ performance on the TOEFL-ITP reading comprehension sub-test

Abstract

This study examined the reading performance of selected students at the Pre-College program of the Mahidol University International College (PC-MUIC)as they are required at the end of each quarter to attain a score of 520 in the TOEFL-ITP (or equivalent performance in IELTS) to enter MUIC. Specifically,this research aimed to evaluate whether the reading skills that participants in this study possessed could be linked to successful performance on the Reading Comprehension sub-test of the TOEFL-ITP. Only TOEFL-ITP Reading Comprehension Sub-test performance was considered in this study as IELTS is not taught or administered in the Pre-College program. This study made use of descriptive qualitative design relying heavily on the following instruments for data collection: Commercial-based test-prep texts (Reading Comprehension Sub-section), Schraw and Roedel’s Levels of Difficulty (1992), the researcher’s modification of said band, the respondents’ scores per question type, tabulations of the respondents’ scores based on the levels of difficulty of the items and the question types used in the test, focused interviews with the respondents, and retrospective journal entries of the researcher. With the aim to shed light on issues surrounding how second language learners’ reading skills affect performance on standardized tests such as TOEFL, the study revealed the following findings:The subjects’ main difficulty was on vocabulary primarily because (1)their lexis was insufficient, and (2) they either had no or lacked knowledge of different word meanings in different contexts; second, questions in expanded format proved to be difficult as combining new ideas to form a new whole involved cognitive and meta-cognitive tasks they could not do with ease; inferential questions, generally speaking, were difficult to tackle not only because of the examinees’ poor vocabulary, but also because of their limited schema making them unable to make sense of what the texts indirectly said,and; fourth, making associations between a text and a related subject matter outside the passage was a difficulty which may be attributed to their poor world/background knowledge.A number of suggestions that may be undertaken in exploring other language teaching-learning possibilities follow below.1. That students need to expand their vocabulary both through explicit vocabulary instruction and sustained outside reading; 2.That students have to be taught about the “pervasiveness of contextual variation in meaning” (Nagy, n.d.) and be trained how to recognize these changes so as to raise their level of awareness; 3.That more synthesis and analysis exercises should be given to the students to develop in them the ability to put ideas together to create a sound outcome; 4.That students should be more exposed to texts with implied meanings; 5.That students should be more exposed to readings rich in world meanings aimed at deepening their world/background knowledge;6.That another investigation looking into said area through the use of verbal protocol be done in the future to further confirm results of this study;7. That a replicate study may be done in the future using, if possible, real TOEFL test items;8. That should a replicate study be done in the future, it is important to note that exactly the same testing conditions be observed so as to achieve an experience closest to that of, if not the same as, the actual TOEFL exam, and;9. That findings and Conclusions of this study should be taken as something unique to the experience of the research participants and not an absolute representation of the entire PC population or of the MUIC students taking TOEFL as part of the university’s admission requirements.