Analysis of the Quality of Junior High School English Test Papers Based on Bachman’s Framework of Test Usefulness: A Case Study of the 2024 Mid-term Test Paper for Grade 8 in Yichang

Abstract

With the advancement of educational reform, the importance of English testing in basic education has become increasingly prominent. It is not only an important means of assessing students’ learning outcomes but also a key tool for guiding teaching directions. This study is based on Bachman and Palmer’s (1996) ‘test usefulness’, aiming to comprehensively analyse and evaluate the quality of the mid-term test paper for Grade 8 English subject in the fall of 2024 at X Middle School in Yichang from the perspectives of reliability, construct validity, authenticity, interactiveness, impact, and practicality. The study hopes to provide some guidance for the design of junior high school English exam papers and English teachers’ teaching practices. The research findings indicate that the test paper has high reliability, good impact, and strong practicality. However, there are still some issues with the test paper. First, in terms of construct validity, the test paper comprehensively assesses language ability, cultural awareness, and language knowledge, but it lacks depth in exploring critical thinking; and the test paper does not assess students’ learning ability. Second, the test paper lacks authenticity, as the multiple-choice questions are not real-world tasks. Third, the test’s interactiveness is weak. Most questions focus on understanding surface-level information in the text, so it limit its ability to activate test-takers’ topic-related knowledge.