Abstract:
The Language Assessment Scales exam is used to identify English as a Second Language students in elementary, middle and high schools and to determine their level of English proficiency. This paper investigates the secondary school forms, 2 and 3, looking at cultural bias, test item discrimination, item difficulty, and distractors. Results of the qualitative and quantitative analysis indicate that numerous items on the exam present challenges outside of the realm of language specifically. These items need to be rewritten or discarded completely. Further studies need to be conducted in the future with larger heterogeneous samples to ascertain more conclusive results.