APPLICATION OF REVISED BLOOMS TAXONOMY IN ENGLISH TEST BATTERIES FOR AGRICULTURE STUDENTS IN BANGLADESH: AN EVALUATIVE INVESTIGATION

Abstract

Learning outcomes of an English course are successfully materialized when the contents are assessed, tested, and finally evaluated in a valid and reliable way, strengthening a positive backwash effect. Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy is widely accepted and used as an assessment tool that measures the students' cognitive development. This paper aims to evaluate the English question papers prepared for the agriculture learners using revised Bloom's taxonomy at a public agricultural university in Bangladesh. It explores the extent to which the objectives of the English curriculum are reflected in question papers. Notwithstanding, it also investigates the cognitive level of taxonomy in practice to assess the students' proficiency. The impetus to work on this topic comes from observing students' more unsatisfactory performance in the English final examination that reflects their low level of understanding. For this purpose, the English curriculum and questions of different faculties during 2015 to 2019 have been taken into account as a source of data. Moreover, critical descriptive and content analyses are accomplished depending on the verb lists of Bloom's taxonomy. Besides, the collected data are then quantified to demonstrate them in a statistical form. Accordingly, five English teachers were interviewed on the application of Bloom's taxonomy in the research context. Henceforth, this study includes a mixed-method approach using both qualitative and quantitative data. The findings of the paper reveal that the question papers include mostly the lower-domain or level of taxonomy focusing the remember, understand, and to some extent apply levels. Further, the objectives have not been duly justified in the question papers. Hence, it reveals that the present assessment technique does not follow a higher domain of metacognitive skills in developing the creative faculty of the students. Finally, the study suggests that the existing English questions need to be prepared to focus on the higher cognitive domain of knowledge to make the learners cognitively competent in communication.