Comparative study reveals modest score improvements following linguistic exam modifications in nursing students, suggesting clearer test language benefits both native and non-native speakers.
BACKGROUND: English-as-a-second-language (ESL) nursing students fail to graduate from programs at alarming rates. For many of these students, academic failure results from poor performance on multiple choice examinations, which frequently contain linguistic errors. A remedy for these errors is to linguistically modify examination questions. This study assessed the effects of linguistic modification on examination scores. METHOD: Scores of ESL and non-ESL nursing students were compared on an experimental multiple choice examination and a control examination. RESULTS: After exclusion, 67 ESL and 252 non-ESL students completed the experimental examination; 68 ESL and 257 non-ESL students completed the control examination. CONCLUSION: Both ESL and non-ESL students scored higher on the experimental examination than on the control examination. For ESL students, the increase in observed means between the experimental and control examination was 0.6%; for non-ESL students, the increase was 0.48%. [J Nurs Educ. 2016;55(6):309-315.].
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Moore et al. (2016) studied this question.
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