Face validity of the TOEFL-ITP according to UnB students

Abstract

The TOEFL-ITP test is a language proficiency test made by ETS, and a very important one for its ease-of-use and application. It is crafted for institutions that want to provide en masse English proficiency testing, and here we analyze the context of said tests that were provided by the LwB (language without borders) program, at UnB. In language assessment, there are ways to determine whether a test can be trusted or not - its validity. It is split into four kinds of validity: content, criterion, construct and face validity. In this paper, we aimed at determining whether the test had face validity among UnB students, who had the opportunity to take the test free of charge, and for that we used a questionnaire based off of qualitative research and the Likert scale, since face validity is subjective rather than objective. The results were that the test does possess face validity, but some aspects of it may need more research, such as the time given for the realization of the test, since some students considered it unsatisfactory. In suma, the paper aims at being a stepping stone to assist further projects related to validity of proficiency tests.