Evaluating the validity of Ottó’s language analytical ability test

Abstract

The present study evaluated a subtest of the Hungarian language aptitude test that is intended to measure language analytical ability, a core component of language aptitude (Ottó, 2002). 113 students enrolled in ESL writing courses at a large U.S. university took the aptitude test and responded to a demographic survey. Rasch analysis, content analysis, and distractor analysis indicated that learners’ responses on the final item were unreliable because they possibly could not access relevant information to answer this item. The removal of this item contributed to adequate internal consistency (KR20 = 0.76; 95% CI: [0.69, 0.81]) and person separation reliability (0.78). The collective evidence shows that the test scores accurately represent test takers’ performance and that the test produces reliable scores in this context. The present study is timely given the intense interest in language aptitude in the field of second language acquisition and a lack of freely available aptitude measures.