The Development of a Situational English Communication Competency Assessment for Grade 6 Students in Udon Thani Province

Abstract

The objectives of this research were: 1) to develop and evaluate the quality of a situational English communication competency assessment for grade 6 students in Udon Thani province, 2) to establish norms for the assessment, and 3) to establish an administration manual for the assessment. The sample group consisted of 450 Grade 6 students enrolled in the first semester of the 2025 academic year under the Udon Thani Primary Educational Service Office Areas 1 and 4, obtained through multi-stage random sampling. The research instrument was a situational English communication competency assessment for grade 6 students. The test was a multiple - choice situational items, each providing four alternatives and consisting of 50 items, with a binary scoring system (0 and 1). The instrument was analyzed for content validity, difficulty, discrimination power, and reliability. Additionally, established and presented the normal criteria in the form of T-score norms.

The research findings revealed that:

1) A situational English communication competency assessment for grade 6 students in Udon Thani province consisted of 42 multiple - choice situational items with a scoring system of 0 and 1. Eight items failed to meet the statistical criteria after the try-out and were therefore excluded. The content validity indices ranged from .60 to 1.00. The difficulty levels ranged from .20 to .80, and the discrimination power ranged from .24 to .48. The overall reliability of the test was 0.92.

2) The normalized T-score norms for the entire assessment ranged from T27 to T68.

3) The establishment of the manual for the assessment consisted of eight primary components and the evaluation of the established manual resulted in an average score of 4.49, which is considered highly appropriate and represents the high level of suitability according to the evaluation criteria.