Analysis Based On Bloom’s Taxonomy: Pakistan’s Federal English Curriculum And Examination Content For Matric

Abstract

This paper investigates the alignment of Matric English curriculum objectives and the Annual test content i.e. the high stakes public examinations, Matric in Pakistan. The objective of this research paper is to address an important issue of English language assessment in Matric System i.e. discrepancy between curriculum objectives and test content with the aim to contribute towards a better, more reliable and valid language assessment and testing system for the related stake holders i.e. test developers, users and researchers especially in Pakistan.

The Cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) was used to develop a codifying system for the investigation. All the Curriculum objectives and test tasks of papers (2009-2013) were coded and the frequency and percentages of occurrence of Bloom’s different cognitive levels were evaluated. In the light of the presented evidence, it was concluded that there was a discrepancy between the higher order and lower order cognitive skills in the curriculum and test content i.e. the frequency and percentage of higher order cognitive skills was higher in the curriculum objectives contrary to the results from the data of the test content. Results from this study have implications for all the stakeholders of Matric test/exam[i].