The Analysis of Foreign Language Proficiency Exam for the State Employees Based on the CEFR


Creative Commons License

DEMİR D., GENÇ A.

HACETTEPE UNIVERSITESI EGITIM FAKULTESI DERGISI-HACETTEPE UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, cilt.31, sa.1, ss.53-65, 2016 (ESCI) identifier identifier

Özet

The aim of this study is to analyze Foreign Language Proficiency Exam for the State Employees, administered in Turkey between the years of 1990-2013, albeit under a different name nowadays, to assess foreign language abilities of state employees. The criteria for this analysis were improved based on a current and international guideline for foreign language teaching domain, which is called "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages", developed by European Council in 2001 to standardize the teaching and grading of the foreign languages, in addition to some other recent guidelines. First of all, examination benchmarks were developed to assess the levels of KPDS's grammar and vocabulary questions. Based on these benchmarks, 80 questions in the exam, with the five answer choices for each of them, were analyzed. As a result of this analysis, it was confirmed that 2011 - KPDS fall semester German language exam was equivalent to the levels A and B in terms of grammar and B or C in terms of vocabulary, which increased the difficulty level of the questions. Hence, it was concluded that the exam mentioned here was equivalent to B and C levels with regard to vocabulary. In the light of these findings, some of the equivalency tables declared by the Council of Higher Education, YOK and OSYM were interpreted. Based on these interpretations, it was suggested to remove the A1 and A2 equivalencies included in the tables.