Abstract
In foreign language education, it is challenging to distinguish between the criteria of “Knowledge and Skills” and “Abilities to Think, Make a Judgment, and Express Themselves” in criterion-based assessment. This study investigated the extent to which students in a teacher-training program could learn to distinguish these two criteria. The participants were 24 undergraduates, including 10 second-year students who had not yet studied criterion-based assessment and 14 third-year students who had received one semester of instruction in it. They classified 27 items from the 2024 Kanagawa Prefectural High School English Entrance Examination into the two criteria. The results showed that the third-year students classified the items more accurately than the second-year students. In particular, they were more likely to base their judgments on the presence or absence of “purpose, scene, or situation.” However, some test items remained difficult to classify. For instance, questions that did not clearly present “purpose, scene, or situation” were particularly difficult to classify. Reading comprehension items were also difficult to classify because the boundary between “understanding the content” and “identifying necessary information or key points” was unclear. This study confirms the value of assessment literacy training in a teacher-training program, yet also points to the inherent difficulties in criterion-based assessment.
https://ror.org/00khh5r84 
