Effectiveness of marking scheme in testing

Abstract

This thesis entitled 'Effectiveness of Marking Scheme in Language Testing' has aimed to find out effectiveness of marking scheme in testing especially the answer sheets of SLC level students. For this purpose the data were collected conducting conference marking selecting 40 teachers from the two districts-Jhapa and Morang of eastern Nepal. The selected teachers were trained and untrained, male and female, private boarding school and government school teachers. After using marking scheme the difference was found item wise. More variation in marking was found to occur in subjective type test items than objective ones without using marking scheme. After using marking scheme the variation was minimized to some extent. The gist of the research is that marking scheme is effective in testing both types of language competencies: reading and writing.

The thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter deals with general background, language and language testing, meaning and importance of marking, approaches to marking , objectives of the study, significance of the study. The second chapter includes the methodology applied to carry out research. It deals with the sources of data sampling procedures, tools of data collection, process of data collection and limitation of the study. The third chapter deals with the analysis and the interpretation of the data. The researcher has used descriptive style to present processes of effectiveness of marking scheme in testing and he has compared and contrasted the scoring of answer sheets of the students scored by the teachers using marking scheme and without using marking scheme. The researcher especially focused on the variation and differences in average mark after using marking scheme in testing the answer sheets. The answer sheets were graded considering the competency level of the students and named as set A, B and C. The fourth chapter presents the findings and recommendations. On the basis of analyzed data, some findings have been listed, and, in turn, on the basis of these findings, some recommendations have been made for pedagogical implications.