The Assessment of English Language Tests in the General Certificate of Secondary Education in Libya

Abstract

This paper examines copies of English language examinations of the general secondary school stage in Libya. It presents examples from previous years. The study objective is to examine different types of English language tests and to find out which skills do they test and how they are tested.  The examination of these tests is an appropriate method to this kind of study. It enables the researcher to answer the questions mentioned above and then provide the alternative suitable ways to assess students’ communicative skills. Due to the fact that English language teachers enter their profession with deficient academic preparation and they do not receive in-service training to develop their teaching and testing skills, examples of testing reading, writing and listening have been given to show the appropriate way to test these skills. For this reason, it is believed that this study is important in the sense that it evaluates the current English languages tests and provides good examples of how to improve them.