A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF ANGLAIS QUESTIONS PAPERS IN THE BEPC CERTIFICATE EXAMINATIONS IN CAMEROON
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v11i11.5594Keywords:
examination, assessment, testing, competency-based approachAbstract
This paper analyses what and how the English Language (Anglais) was assessed at the BEPC certificate examinations in Cameroon over the period of 16 years (2009-2024). It considered Anglais question papers set under both the objective-based approach (2009 to 2016) and competency-based approach (2017 to 2024) so as to find out the change brought by the introduction of the newer approach. The content and statistical analyses of data have shown that the theoretical CBA assessment principles are yet to be fully implemented. Essential knowledge-wise, the effective implementation of the novel approach from 2018 has marked the end of testing pronunciation; it has introduced integrative testing (46.87%) in grammar (62.5%) and vocabulary (31.25%) in the forms of cloze passage and dialogue completions, with the old OBA discrete-point testing in the form of sentence completions resisting the change. Skills-wise, listening and speaking are unaccounted for in favour of reading comprehension and writing composition. While there is little change in what and how OBA and CBA assess reading comprehension, CBA has introduced new composition writing principles in structuring topics like context definition, instruction clarification and indicators or task specification, thus lengthening composition topics. The syllabus coverage in terms of situation assessment decreases as one goes from the first to the fifth situation under both OBA and CBA. Some suggestions and recommendations have been made to BEPC examination stakeholders for the effective implementation of CBA assessment principles.
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