Abstract:
This study aimed to build a placement test, find out the quality and improve the placement test for the first year students at Rajapruk University. The sample used for this study was 100 first year students of Rajapruk University. The placement was used as a tool. The quality of the test was found out by validity, reliability, discrimination, and difficulty. Data was analyzed using difficulty, discrimination, KR-20, correlation, mean, and standard deviation. The result revealed that the test has five parts with twenty questions in each
part: the first part is vocabulary, the second part is error identification, the third part is
passage reading, the fourth part is sentence completion, and the last part is passage
completion. The quality of validity has an IOC value at 0.86 and the reliability at 0.81.
The percentage of the test quality is at 85. Most questions are rather difficult. The best
part is the vocabulary part, next is passage completion, passage reading, error identification, and sentence completion respectively. When considering the correlation,
the first, third, and fifth part obtained the positive correlation, while the fourth and the
fifth part obtained the inverse correlation by having the correlation value between .30 -
.85. The test has been done by improving the difficult questions and distracted questions as well as improving the questions, alternatives, and distracters. The passage has been improved by selecting passages which are familiar with students, for example: appointments, telephone conversations, articles from newspapers or magazines, reading
graphs, short reports, goods and services advertisements, describing a person in the form
of writing, email writing regarding the course description.