Philippine E-Journals

The main objective of the study was to determine the level ofquestioning of Western Mindanao State University (WMSU) Literature teachersas reflected in their test papers. It also looked into the significant differencein the respondents’ questioning levels if data would be grouped according totheir employment status.

The study employed descriptive research design. It made use of thedocumentary analysis of test papers in Literature 101 &102 using Bloom’sTaxonomy of Objectives as basis. To validate the data gathered through thedocumentary analysis, the face-to-face interview with the teacher-respondentswas conducted.

The study revealed that majority of the teachers were confined inasking “Knowledge Questions” which are considered the low-level questions.Furthermore, when data were grouped according to their employment status,the result indicated no significant difference in the levels of questions askedbetween the regular and the non-regular teachers. It also showed that thestatus of employment of participating teachers did not have anything to dowith how they developed their test questions. The distribution of test itemswith regard to the different levels of questioning strategies was, more or less,the same for both the regular and the non-regular teachers.

Through the interview, half of the respondents admitted they preferobjective tests although most contain low-level questions for they are easy tocorrect and to score. The other half had varied reasons, such as: 1) students’being more responsive to the objective test than to essay type, 2) knowledgequestions being more appropriate to the nature of long examinations forliterature, and 3) literal questions needing much shorter time in answeringthan the essay type does.