This document discusses item analysis for language tests. Item analysis measures the performance of individual test items to help improve both the items and the overall test. It involves analyzing the item difficulty, item discrimination, and distractor efficiency. Item difficulty deals with the percentage of students answering correctly. Item discrimination differentiates between high- and low-ability students. Distractor efficiency examines how well distractors mislead lower-ability test takers. Conducting item analysis helps ensure tests are reliable, valid, and provide diagnostic information about students.

1. Authors:
Hector Rojas
Daniel Blanco
Yuly Caraballo

2. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
 Objective  Easy to guess
 Easy to design  Only for grammar,
 Easy to include a vocabulary, pronunciation
representative example  Not good for testing the
skills.
 Students need to decide on
what answers accepted as
correct.

3. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
 Objective  Extremely difficult to
 Easy to correct design an item with only
 Provides clear contexts one possible answer
 It can be used to correct (generally solved by
different strategies. providing a list of terms)
 Need to think about
possible answers (if a list is
not provided)

4. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
 Easy for the teacher to  Unexpected correct answers
create are possible
 Easy for the students to  Mainly for vocabulary
understand  It can be irritating for
 Easy to correct and students
design .

5. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
 It is easy to construct  Depend on knowledge of
 Requires simple recognition language
of information (eliminatting  Difficult to grade
the guessing factor) depending on evaluation
 It is good to evaluate criteria
listening for specific  It can be irritating for
information students

6. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
 Difficult to construct
 Easy to correct and grade
 It does not allowed test takers
 Scores are less affected by
guessing to demonstrate knowledge
 Good for checking beyond the options provided
 Emphasize in recognition and
understanding
 Usually it requires less time for guessing rather than in
test takers to answer production

7. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
 Easy to write  Guessing element
 Can cover a wide range of  The score can not be
difficulty levels reliable
 Usually it requires less time  It does not allow test takers
for test takers to answer to demonstrate broad
 Usually it is easy to grade range of knowledge
and score

8. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
 Good for testing some  Very artificial
structures  It can be more than one
 Easy to write and possible transformation in
administer some cases
 Specifically tackle one
grammatical objective
 Allow recognition of a
connection between
“grammar” and “meaning”

9. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
 It is good for checking if  It is not easy to score
students  It takes more time to
comprehend texts. correct and answer.
 It is useful to test the
student's ability to analyze
a concept.

10. FORMAT RECOMMENDATIONS
Matching • Give more options than questions.
• Each answer should have distracters.
• Try meaningful items.
• Make sure there’s only one possible selection.
• Do not ask to draw lines to match.
Gap filling • No blank at the beginning.
• Give enough context.
• Avoid clues.
• Only one answer
• Give line with the same length
Cloze Don’t use nth word, for example : 5th , 3rd

11. Completion • Avoid the statement becomes ambiguous.
• Use blanks of the same length throughout the test so that the length is
not a clue.
• If possible, put the blank at the end of a statement rather than at the
beginning. Asking for a response before the student understands the
intent of the statement can be confusing and may require more reading
time.
Multiple choice • Be clear and concise in your word and phrase choices.
• Make sure that there is only one clearly correct answer from the options
given to the student.
• Randomly distribute the correct answer options i.e. A, B, C, D etc so that
there is not a clear pattern that becomes obvious to the student.
True-False • Make sure that the answer is clear and that it could not be either or.
• Try not to use negative questions such as “this novel was not written
by....”
• Use a random order of true and false responses with your test questions to
avoid creating a pattern.
• Use more false questions than true questions as they have been proven to
cater towards higher cognitive level students.
Questions • It has to be easy to understand.
• Check how you will judge answers.

12. Multiple choice items
She had to help the ______ old man up the stairs.
A. weak B. slowly C. try D. wisdom All words should belong
Adverb Verb Noun to the same grammatical
category.
A. weak B. strong C. energetic D. athletic

13. She needs to get up earlier so she’s buying an
______ clock. Grammatical clues make
the answer obvius.
A. time B. alarm C. watch D. bell
She needs to get up earlier so she’s buying
Deleting the indefinite
______ clock.
article would make this
item better in terms of
A. a time B. an alarm C. a watch D. a bell
objectivity.

14. They needed lots of training to operate such
The level of difficulty of
______ equipment.
the distractors highlights
the correct alternative.
A. easy B. sophisticated C. blue D. wise
“Sophisticated” clearly contrasts with the rest of the options, so students
might select it right away.

15. She sent the _______ yesterday. Options that collocate with
the verb in the sentence.
A. letter B. gift C. food D. books (Differentiators)
“Post”, “friend” and “courage” are good replacements for “gift”, “food” and
“books” that are items that can also be sent or mailed.
She wrote a _______ yesterday.
A. letter B. gift C. friend D. books

16. Completion
The absence of context will
He was a very nerv_____ person. lead to the acceptance of
unexpected correct answers.
An advanced learner could get to the conclusion of completing with the
letter “y” to form the adjective “nervy”, which means “bold” or “offensive”.
He was always alert. He was a ________ person. In this case, given the context,
the correct option is “nervous”.

17. Words that may take
That was a care______ answer. two opposite suffixes
lead to ambiguity.
Enough context will
Yesterday he got on the wrong bus. So today, he permit the student know
was care_______ to find the right one. which alternative is the
most appropiate one.

18. True-False
The use of trivial information must
be avoided . Given the fact that
Columbus discovered America.
they are more likely to be true
than ambiguous information.
If used, they must be presented
Columbus sailed to the new world in 1942.
in a more objective way.

19. Since penguins can’t fly, they cannot swim very well either.
Avoiding the use of
negative statements
will prevent confusion
and contradiction.
Since penguins are unable to fly, they swim badly.

20. The first three
Rattlesnakes live in North America, have fangs, clauses are true,
feed on small rodents and crush their prey. however the last
one is not.
The entire sentence
Rattlesnakes crush their preys. must be either true or
false, otherwise it will
create confusion.

21. Matching The instructions do not clarify how
many times items in column 2 may be
used or a basis for matching.
Match column 1 and comlumn 2:
___1. Sit-and-reach c. Muscle fibers
___2. 50-yard dash h. Golf Contain the same
___3. Pull-up f.Tennis number of items, so
___4. Shuttle run a.Vo₂max the last item could
___5. Balke treadmill e.Agility be answered by
___6. Dyer backboard volley g.Arm strength elimination.
___7. Disch putting d.Speed
___8. Biopsy b.Flexibility
Items are too heterogeneus, making the
answers too obvious.

22. Transformation
The activity lacks context
Change the sentences to the future simple:
Doug studied English yesterday.
Doug went to the movies with his family. The sentences
He eats a hamburger. should be provided
They enjoy the day in the mall. in the same tense, to
prevent confusion.
This exercise requieres more contextualized instructions, such as:
This is what Doug usually does on the weekend, write about what
he is going to do next the weekened.

23. Item analysis: measure the performance of each
item in a test and help us to revise and improve
both, items and test as a whole.
Use:
-To build reliablity and validity into a test.
- More diagnosis information on students.

24.  Item difficulty: deals with the number of
students who answer correctly. The best
items are that are neither too difficult or too
hard.
IF = # of students answering the item correctly
Total of students responding that item.

25.  Item discrimination : differenciates those
test takers with high - abilities from those
with low - abilities.

26.  Distractor efficiency: deals with the way a
distractor lures test takers, especially those
with low abilities.

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Principles and Classroom prractices. Longman,
London.
Cunningham, George (1998) Assessment in the
Classroom: Constructing and interpreting Tests.
Routledge, London.
Morrow, James and others (2010)Measurement and
Evaluation in Human Performance. Human kinetics,
Illinois.
Madsen, Harold (1983) Techniques in testing. Oxford
University Press, New York.