Abstract

BackgroundThe National Center Test is a test that high school graduates take in order to be matriculated into the majority of universities in Japan. Its English section (NCT), though, is scheduled to be replaced by commercially available private English tests of four skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) due to the fact that NCT currently measures only the receptive skills of reading and listening. A concern has been raised, however, regarding the score comparability between NCT and those tests of four skills. Thus, this study was conducted in order to examine to what extent the score of NCT and TOEFL Junior Comprehensive (JC)—one of the commercially available private English tests of four skills—correlate with each other and to what extent their test constructs overlap from the viewpoint of L2 competence structure.MethodsOne hundred forty-four twelfth graders in Japan took NCT and JC. Pearson’s correlations and an exploratory factor analysis (maximum likelihood) were conducted. Moreover, confirmatory factor analyses and chi-square difference tests were performed in order to compare several models.ResultsThe results show that the scores of the two tests are highly correlated with each other, indicating that JC can be a proper candidate to replace NCT. Moreover, an exploratory factor analysis revealed that all of the six scores can be subsumed under a single factor. According to the results of a series of confirmatory factor analyses and chi-square difference tests, the correlated skill model was shown to be the best fit model, but the unitary model was almost equally a good fit as well.ConclusionsThe results overall indicate that, regardless of tests and skills to measure, English proficiency as a general construct may determine the major portion of these scores. This poses the question of whether, in order to assess learners’ English proficiency, all four skills need to be measured separately.

Highlights

  • The National Center Test is a test that high school graduates take in order to be matriculated into the majority of universities in Japan

  • The lowest figure was observed in the combination between NCT listening and Junior Comprehensive (JC) speaking at 0.59 and the highest was between the two readings at 0.78

  • An exploratory factor analysis Because all of the six scores were highly correlated, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted in order to detect the number of latent factors, using raw scores

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Summary

Introduction

Its English section (NCT), though, is scheduled to be replaced by commercially available private English tests of four skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) due to the fact that NCT currently measures only the receptive skills of reading and listening. This study was conducted in order to examine to what extent the score of NCT and TOEFL Junior Comprehensive (JC)—one of the commercially available private English tests of four skills—correlate with each other and to what extent their test constructs overlap from the viewpoint of L2 competence structure. After 20 years of implementation, NCT is scheduled to be replaced by commercially available private tests due to the criticism of its incapability to measure four skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) despite the fact that the ministry’s curriculum guidelines stipulate that these skills are expected to be acquired in a balanced manner in English education in school (Ministry of Education 2010). A concern has been raised regarding the degree of Official names

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