THE EFFECT OF LANGUAGE ON THE PERFORMANCE OF 2ND-LANGUAGE STUDENTS INSCIENCE EXAMINATIONS

It has been established by previous researchers that changes in the wo rding of multiple-choice examination questions can significantly affec t pupil performance. In this study recent 'home' General Certificate o f Secondary Education (GCSE) and 'overseas' General Certificate of Edu cation (GCE) papers were examined for questions in which the language could be simplified, and modified questions were prepared. When perfor mance on the original and modified forms of the questions was compared for a sample of British school pupils, no statistically significant d ifference emerged. When performance on the same questions was examined for a sample of pupils for whom English was the second (or third) lan guage, there were significant differences in their performance on modi fied and unmodified versions of the questions.