The Development of a Scale to Evaluate Foreign Language Skills at Preparatory Schools

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to develop a valid and reliable scale evaluating the effectiveness of language preparatory programs in the acquisition of language skills. In the development of Foreign Language Skills Scale (FLSS) in this study, research sample consisted of 326 preparatory school students for the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and 350 preparatory school students for the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Based on the data obtained from the first sample, an EFA was carried out on the FLSS. EFA has identified that 27 items of the scale have factor loads between 0.519 and 0.729, while they explain 65.376% of the total variance and are distributed under five factors. These factors are named as writing skill, speaking skill, listening skill, core skills, and reading skill. A CFA was applied on the data obtained from the second sample that consisted of 350 students. As a result of the CFA, it was confirmed that the FLSS consisted of 27 items and five factors. For all the items in the scale, item-subscale, item-test correlation coefficients and mean differences between the upper and the lower 27% of the participants were calculated, and it is determined that each item is consistent with not only the subscale it is under but also the whole test. In addition, the Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficients of the total scale's and five sub-scales' internal consistency is quite high. The FLSS is expected to offer a comprehensive evaluation of the acquisition of four language skills in foreign language teaching programs.

A Cefr Based Evaluation of B1+ Level Preparatory Program at a Turkish State University: The Application of the Foreign Language Skills Scale

“…All the studies discussed above tried to examine the effectiveness of language programs in terms of course materials, curriculum, assessment, activities and teaching objectives in general; yet there is only one study conducted to develop a scale assessing the success level of language learners in both language skills and core English course as described in the CEFR. In his study, Arslan (2020) developed the Foreign Language Skills Scale (FLSS) by focusing on the descriptors of the CEFR including A1, A2, B1, and B1+ levels; however, there is no evaluation of any preparatory school program through the use of the scale since it has been currently developed. Therefore, being the first of its kind, the study aims to fill this gap in the literature by evaluating B1+ level program at an English Preparatory School in a Turkish State University.…”

“…The present study seeks to examine the success of learners from the level of B1+ in accordance with the learning outcomes of the CEFR; and thus, evaluating the language program of the preparatory school by using FLSS (Arslan, 2020). To achieve these aims, the following research questions are addressed;…”

“…Foreign Language Skills Scale (FLSS) developed by Arslan (2020) was used to collect the quantitative data during the study. FLSS consists of 27 items and 5 factors named by examining the contents of the items gathered under five factors.…”

“…The common aim of these studies concerning language program evaluations is to investigate whether there is a match between what is desired for the program and the actual state of the program along with learners' level of skills and knowledge (Üstünlüoğlu et al, 2012). In the Turkish context, the demand for English in higher education is increasing, which, in turn, necessities intensive English programs being either compulsory or voluntary because either the medium of instruction in some universities is in English or some courses are offered in English (Arslan, 2020). From this aspect, preparatory programs' role is crucial to help students attain a proficiency level in English so that they can follow their courses in English effectively, which also makes it important to evaluate if preparatory schools serve for this aim or not (Coşkun, 2013;Ekşi, 2017).…”

“…From this aspect, preparatory programs' role is crucial to help students attain a proficiency level in English so that they can follow their courses in English effectively, which also makes it important to evaluate if preparatory schools serve for this aim or not (Coşkun, 2013;Ekşi, 2017). It is in this context that the present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of an English preparatory school program by applying Foreign Language Skills Scale (Arslan, 2020), which can be used to maintain a comprehensive overview of the process of teaching language skills in the light of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001), in an intensive modular preparatory program at a Turkish state university.…”