Test-taking strategies

To succeed in tests does not require only content knowledge. Test-taking strategies are other factors which help students to achieve high scores in tests. The present mixed-method study set out to examine the relationship between test-taking strategies and reading test performance. To achieve the objectives of the study, a reading comprehension test, and a 35-item Likert type strategy questionnaire were given to 214 male and female university students. Analysis of the gathered data revealed that there was a positive relationship between test-taking strategies and reading test performance and that successful, moderately, successful, and unsuccessful test-takers differed in their use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. To gain an in depth view on strategy use pattern of the test-takers, retrospective interviews along with think-aloud protocols were applied which revealed the use of metacognitive test-taking strategies more than cognitive ones. These findings can have beneficial implications for language testers, teachers, learners, and course developers.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the validity of the English section of Iranian Universities PhD Entrance Exam in TEFL. To this end, 15 EFL learners from university of Isfahan who were in their last semester of that MA education were invited to contribute to the study. A group of 5 university lecturers were also asked to support the study as expert judges. A TOEFL reading paper was used to divide the participants into three ability groups, each consisting of five learners. Think-aloud study was used to find out the strategies each ability group used when completing the test. All the participants completed the reading section of the PhD Entrance Exam while verbalizing their thoughts. The verbal reports were transcribed and coded based on Barati’s (2005) taxonomy of Test-taking strategies. The Chi- square analysis of the think aloud protocols revealed that Monitoring and Evaluation strategies were used significantly more than other strategies by all ability groups. Moreover, the results indicated that the high ability group of test takers were more successful compared with others in maneuvering among different type of strategies. Further, different patterns of strategy use were observed in the three ability groups. The findings of the present study may be of interest to the PhD Entrance Exam developers as well as EFL material designers and classroom instructors.

Although most researchers have recently considered the role of test-taking strategies as one of the most vital factors in test taking process, it has been ignored by most EFL teachers in educational and academic settings including Iran. Because of the importance of test-taking strategies in EFL learners’ performance in tests, this research was set out to examine what strategies Iranian EFL test takers employed in reading comprehension tests. Furthermore, the present paper aimed at finding any possible relationship between test-taking strategies and test takers’ performance on reading comprehension tests. Discovering the best predictors of EFL reading test performance among several categories of test-taking strategies was also investigated. To this end, 135 EFL students were chosen based on their availability. All of the students were female, majoring in different fields of study. Three kinds of materials including multiple-choice reading comprehension tests, a questionnaire, and interviews were utilized to investigate the research questions. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Correlation, and stepwise regression. The results showed a significant, positive, but low correlation between the students’ total reading score and planning and also monitoring strategies. Furthermore, planning strategy proved to be a predictor of English reading comprehension test.

This study aimed at identifying the most frequent test-taking strategies used by successful Iranian male and female university entrance exam EFL applicants. To this end, 150 English major male and female freshman students who got admission to three reputable state universities of Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tehran were selected conveniently and purposively. The model used in this study was developed by Barati (2005) consisting of planning, monitoring, evaluation, and test-wiseness strategies. After selecting the participants, the modified questionnaire developed based on Barati’s test-taking strategy taxonomy was distributed among the participants. Based on the analysis of results, it was revealed that the EFL learners made frequent use of planning, monitoring, evaluation, and test-wiseness strategies, but only the level of use of planning and monitoring strategies reached statistical significance. Moreover, male and female EFL learners were only significantly different in their use of evaluation strategies, but in terms of using planning, monitoring, and test-wiseness strategies, males and females were not significantly different from one another. The findings of the study bear useful implications for EFL learners, teachers, materials designers, and test constructors.

The present study was intended to investigate the roles of test-taking strategies, critical thinking, and self-efficacy in the language proficiency of the female Iranian Ph.D. students at Islamic Azad University (IAU), Shahrekord Branch, Shahrekord, Iran. The participants of the study, who were 98 Ph.D. students from a range of disciplines, were getting ready to sit for the English Proficiency Test (EPT) as a partial requirement for the completion of their courses and take the Comprehensive Exam subsequently. These participants were required to complete the test-taking strategies, critical thinking, and self-efficacy questionnaires, one questionnaire per session, towards the end of their English course with the present researcher. They also took a sample of EPT for their final exam. Standard multiple regression was conducted to see how well self-efficacy, critical thinking, and test-taking strategies could predict the participants’ language proficiency. The obtained results revealed that language proficiency had strong, positive, and significant correlations with critical thinking, test-taking strategies, and self-efficacy. Moreover, it was found that all the three independent variables were significant predictors of language proficiency, with critical thinking being the best predictor, test-taking strategies the second, and self-efficacy the third. The significance of these results lies in the fact that individual attributes like critical thinking, self-efficacy, and test-taking strategies play a significant role in the success of students when it comes to language proficiency.       

A major concern of language testing researchers has for long been the identification of construct-irrelevant influential cognitive and psychological bias factors in test takers’ language test performance and recently the identification of the tentative models of interactions among such factors. With the same purpose in mind, the present study investigated the direct and indirect interrelationships among EFL learners’ test anxiety, test-wiseness, reading metacognitive awareness, and reading comprehension test performance through a path analytic research design. To this end and on the basis of the related literature and the previous research findings, first a hypothesized model of the interrelationship among the variables was assumed. Next, 317 undergraduate and graduate students took the related questionnaires and tests. Finally, the obtained data were analyzed through AMOS statistical package and the hypothesized model of the interrelationship among variables was tested. According to the final verified model, test-wiseness directly predicted reading comprehension test performance, while test anxiety did not. Moreover, while reading strategies metacognitive awareness did not directly predict reading comprehension test performance, it was indirectly associated with reading comprehension test performance through the mediation of test-wiseness. In addition, both correlational and path analyses confirmed a strong negative relationship between reading strategies metacognitive awareness, and test anxiety. The findings highlight the importance of the language test takers' less test anxiety and enhanced metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and test-wiseness for their more reliable test-taking performances.