De Moeilijkheidsgraad Van Tekstbegripvragen In Nederlands En Engels

The final exams for English in Dutch secondary schools contain a multiple choice component for text comprehension. The questions in this component are mainly about factual content but progressively also about communicative aspects such as opinions and style. It is usually assumed that the latter add to the level of difficulty of the test in general. But is this really the case? In a (limited) project caried out by the University of Groningen this assumption has been tested in six pre-final forms at three grammartype schools, by setting the same test in Dutch and in English within a six-week interval. At the same time the influence of vocabulary command was mapped out against the overall test results. The communicative questions did not turn out to be more difficult in English than in Dutch and there appeared to be a strong correlation between the overall (not: single item) vocabulary command and general test score. The average test results were considerably higher (4.0) for the Dutch test than for the equivalent English one.