BAB I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Testing
becomes important at every stage of human lives, as well as in the language learning.
McNamara in Razi
(2005: 1) argues
that there are
some reasons for administering
language tests, which
play a powerful
role in an individual‘s social and working life.
Language teachers work with language tests since they
need to evaluate
their students. In
language learning, testing
is important to find
out where students
have difficulties in
a language course,
to explore progress or to reflect how well the students in learning a
particular subject (students‘ achievement), and to give a general idea about
students‘ proficiency in the target language. It means that a test can be a
tool to measure how successful a language teaching had been held.
In line
with the status
of English language
in Indonesia as a foreign language, reading gets more proportion
in teaching and learning process. It is like what Eskey
in Hinkel (2005:
416) said, ―Many
students of English
as a foreign language (EFL),
for example, rarely
speak the language
in their day-to-day
lives but may need
to read it
in order to
access the wealth
information recorded exclusively in
the language.‖ Therefore,
the curriculum for
English subject of senior
high school in
Indonesia states that
graduates from senior
high school are expected
to achieve an
informational level because
they are prepared
to enter university (BSNP
in Nugraha, 2010:
2). On the
informational level, students
are expected to be
able to access
knowledge using its
language. Therefore, a measurement
of student‘s reading
comprehension ability is
to monitor the student‘s difficulties, student‘s achievement,
and student‘s proficiency dealing with English text. That measurement is
generally called a test.
However,
there are some problems that the English language teachers have in testing the
students‘ English language achievement.
One of the
problems is how to determine and
choose appropriate testing techniques based on
what skills and what aspects
should be measured.
Some teachers are
still confused on
what techniques should be
applied in their
class. Some teachers
only use monotonous or
even single techniques.
Moreover, the testing
techniques that are
commonly used now give students an opportunity to cheat on and to guess
easily, or even to gamble.
Such problems
need careful planning
in terms of
the alternative solution. Based on
the description above,
it can be
inferred that it
is important to
have a kind of tools to measure
the students‘ language mastery in education. In order to arrive at the best
solution for any particular situation- the most appropriate test or testing system-
it is not enough to have at one‘s disposal a
collection of test techniques from which
to choose. It
is necessary to
understand how they
can be applied. Therefore,
it is important
for teachers to
know what kinds
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