Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 22 Issue 9

The Status and the Specifications of the Questions of an Achievement Exam from the Points of View of the Teaching Staff- Members of Palestine Technical University- Kadoorie (PTUK)\Tulkarm-Campus Abstract - The aim of this study was to investigate the status and specifications of the questions of an achievement exam from t he points of view of t he teaching staff-mem bers of Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie (PTUK)\Tulkarm campus; to achieve the purpose of this study, the researchers followed a descriptive quantitative approach through which a 24-item questionnaire was distributed, after ensuring its reliability and validity, to a sample of (140) subjects out the population of (355) teaching staff-members of (PTUK). Findings and conclusions of this study confirm the shaggy and blurred reality of the status and the specifications of the questions of an achievement exam : first, little attention is paid, by the teaching staff-members of (PTUK), towards the specifications of the questions of an achievement exam, in the sense that these specifications are not generally anchored to a well-established Taxonomy, i.e. Blooms' Taxonomy, but rather, these specifications are habitually and imitatively referenced to the traditional educational heritage and practice; second, the teaching staff-members of (PTUK), with their different academic ranks, view an achievement exam as an end, in itself, that can be reached with any set of questions or any exam format; third, the absence of a tabulated list of the specifications of the questions of an exam constitutes a hindering realm towards ultimately exploiting an exam as a learning tool that can contribute to develop both the teaching and learning processes; the absence of such a tabulated list of specifications yields a misleading feedback in return, and then, resulted in fake educational judgments and decisions in regard to the teaching and learning processes; accordingly, conclusions of this study highlighted the essentiality of feedback, in this sense, and its clout to steer and orient the processes of teaching and learning; fourth, the teaching staff-members of the Faculty of Arts and Educational Sciences of (PTUK) relatively surpass their fellow-members of other Faculties in (PTUK) in regard to extent of abiding by some taxonomy –referenced specifications whenever they prepare and write questions of a given exam; this outpace, as far as this study is concerned, has been attributed to the educational background of the teaching staff-members of the Faculty of Arts and Educational Sciences of (PTUK); fifth, the prevailing state of improvisational tendency while preparing and writing the questions of an achievement exam mirrors an ultimate need for constant training to the teaching staff- members of (PTUK) on the how to prepare and write questions with educational specifications. As a result, this study © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue IX Version I 5 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 G Corresponding Author α : Lecturer, Department of languages, Palestine Technical University- Kadoorie (PTUK). e-mails: ptc2004w@hotmail.com, a.aljabsheh@ptuk.edu.ps Author σ : Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, PTU- Khadoorie Palestine. e-mail: m.jayousi@ptuk.edu.ps recommends a set of procedural and inquisitive recommendations. Keywords: specifications, feedback, exam-questions, achievement exam, language, validity, reliability, PTUK, teaching staff-members, Bloom's Taxonomy, learning, teaching. I. I ntroduction sking questions is considered to be an essential element of human communicative behavior that is propelled by curiosity and the need to acquire more knowledge about a given situation; feedback, then, can be an important aspect of the questioning process in a given communicative situation as it- feedback- may dictate modification and adjustment to the structure and content of the posed questions. In the teaching and learning processes, questions and questioning are inevitable because, generally, educators are supposed to seek feedback, from the part of their students and leaners about the has been learning situation, over a span of time; feedback, in this educational sense, enables those educators to make judgments in regard to students and learners' achievement as well as about the teaching practices that have been followed in a given educational situation. As a result, questions, of a given exam or a test, constitute valuable tools to cast feedback that is highly needed to get a formidable view about how far the teaching and the learning processes have achieved what they are supposed to achieve of educational objectives and goals; moreover, and in accordance with previous related literature, it can be stated that students, learners, and exam-takers’ comprehension capacity correlates with the specifications of the questions of a given exam, and, as a result, then, their level of achievement in that given exam. Accordingly, and educationally speaking, it can be proposed that the structure, the language, and, more importantly, the specifications of an exam question correlate with the type, the amount of, and the quality of the feedback that is acquired, in reverse, through that given exam, and also the comprehension capacity and the level of achievement; in other words, furthermore, how much effort is exerted towards producing exam questions that are well-anchored to a given taxonomy of specifications, how fruitful the feedback, A Abd-Al-Hameed Mustafa Mahmoud “Jabsheh” α & Majdi Rashed Jayousi σ