An Investigation of the Frequency of HOT and LOT of Bloom Taxonomy in the Diploma English Entrance Exam

Abstract

This study investigated the implementation of Ujian Khas Bahasa Inggeris as the entrance examination for Diploma in English candidates in one of the local universities in Malaysia. It was conducted with the intention to evaluate the suitability of the test paper with its purpose. This test paper measures the candidates’ proficiency in the English language using grammar and vocabulary items, reading comprehension items and essay writing. For this study, the researchers focused on only vocabulary, grammar and reading comprehension items. Educators use Bloom Taxonomy to determine the difficulty level of the items when constructing test papers; so for this study, the taxonomy is also used to establish the level of difficulty of the items. The Form 5 syllabus of the English Language was used to help in determining the items’ difficulty in the entrance test by referring to the specifications of level for the learning outcomes. The researchers looked at the order of the items in the entry test, to see if the items were arranged from the easiest to the most difficult. The percentages for the Lower Order Thinking (LOT) and Higher Order Thinking (HOT) items and the ratio of the easy, medium and difficult items were calculated. The findings showed that some of the items in the entrance examination need to be revised to ensure the reliability of the instruments in measuring the candidates’ language proficiency.