EFL Proficiency Testing at the University of Dar es Salaam: Performance of Candidates

Abstract

This study sought to measure the University of Dar es Salaam EFL students’ proficiency so as to get deeper and comprehensive insights of the candidates’ variability in their linguistic ability across test areas, namely; comprehensive reading, writing, listening, and grammar and vocabulary. The variability was in terms of sex and level of education. The study adopted a framework of measurement of proficient levels developed by American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) (2012) in which learners are rated at four levels: superior, advanced, intermediate and novice and in which the last three were further subdivided into high, mid and low. 136 Udsm EFL participants were involved in the study. These were test takers who sat for the University of Dar es Salaam proficiency test at different times between 2009 and 2013. These were of different education backgrounds and were picked randomly using their test scripts.The findings showed that, in the whole, the students’ performance was good since all groups of candidates performance ranged from  ‘intermediate’ to ‘intermediate proficient levels with Udsm alumni taking the lead with a mean of 85.5% while ELT short term students were the last with a mean score of 56.3%. In terms of gender, males outperformed females in the four out of five groups, even though the difference was only marginal. As for the content areas that were tested, the candidates’ performance was the highest in the area of vocabulary where their overall mean score was 83 while listening was the most underperformed content area with the mean score of 28.

Keywords: Test, EFL, Language Proficiency, Score Analysis