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

© 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue IX Version I 6 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 G 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 comprehension capacity, and the level of achievement would be, and how reliable and valid the exam, as a whole, would also be. Depending on these premises, this study investigates the status and 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; this study considers questions of an achievement exam as a mere educational communicative act in-between both teachers and students or learners; in this regard, this study also proposes that exam questions, when prepared and written, should be referenced to a well- established taxonomy, i.e. Blooms' cognitive taxonomy, so as to yield desired results that can offer guidance towards developing and elevating the processes of teaching and learning. Although this study bears the limitation of restricting research to the teaching staff-members of Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie (PTUK), its investigative magnitude transcends its boundaries in the sense that, as far as the researchers have known, this is the first study to investigate such a topic, and that the educational nature of the topic can be generalized to other educational situations and environments. To achieve the objective of this study, the researchers followed a quantitative approach in order to investigate and reveal the teaching staff-members' points of view through deciding those highly considered maxims and specifications they- the teaching staff- members- abide by when writing or constructing achievement exam questions, and, then, as a result, drawing a line of understanding in regard to the achievement exams status and the specifications of its questions. II. S tatement of the P roblem Students ,as proved by some of the available literature, prefer exam questions that are tailored to include low thinking-skills and correspond with lower cognitive domains; as a result, and as far as The researchers have known, some teachers tend to abide by this preference while; consciously or sub- consciously; overlooking a wide risk margin of producing exam questions that are not anchored to a reliable criteria or a well-established cognitive taxonomy, and, eventually, passing unreal judgments in regard to the exam-takers' level of achievement, a misleading feedback about the learning continuum, and, then, deeply jeopardizing the reliability and validity maxims that any assessment process must go with, meet, and establish; breaching these maxims is totally risky as it yields an incomplete teaching and learning processes, fake judgments that do not mirror the reality of the teaching and learning processes, and, then, a hindering realm towards developing and elevating both processes. The status and the specifications of the questions of an achievement exams, in PTUK and, may be, in a considerable number of universities and colleges all over the world, and as far as this study proposes, are anchored to a set of professional traditions and heritage rather than a referenced taxonomies or specification matrixes; moreover, depending on the researchers' own experience and mere observation in (PTUK), the specifications of the questions of an achievement exam are thought about as an effort-consuming and as a secondary requirement that can be dealt with by individual teachers who normally refer to a set of professional heritage and imitation . III. T he S ignificance of this S tudy One aspect of the significance of this study is that it can offer, through its empirical approach, a wider sphere of understanding towards the essentiality of the specifications of the questions of an achievement exam to the educational process as a whole; this study, as far as the researchers have experienced in the field, can construct practical definitions, in a unified and connected matrix, to the specifications of the questions of an achievement exam which were, as far as the researchers have known, never surpassed by related research; Another facet of the significance of this study is that its investigative scope can shed more light on the status and the specifications of the questions of an achievement exam as perceived in the minds of the teaching-staff members of (PTUK) as this kind of perception, it is proposed, orients the process of producing and writing exam questions; considering the perceiving mentality, which acts behind the scene, is totally significant for further development and advancement of the teaching and learning processes. IV. L iterature R eview To support the argument, proposal, and questions of this study, the researchers scrutinized an adequate amount of the available related literature which was casted, in this section, in a relative chronological order; to go with the aim of this study, this literature review was divided into three sections: The first section presents the scope of importance and usage of questions in a communicative situation as well as the educational situations in the form of the questions of the achievement exam; the second section highlights the centrality of (Bloom's Taxonomy) as a reference matrix to the classification and the categorization of the questions of a given educational achievement exam; while the third section classifies some of the most common established specifications of the questions of an achievement exam which were rendered in a unified and more digestible exhibit that is somehow different from the scattered rending within the available previous