AN INVESTIGATION INTO FACTORS CAUSING STUDENTS’ POOR RESULTS IN APTIS E-EXAM AT SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

E-exams have been extremely popular and introduced to meet the requirement of both candidates and educational providers. Established by British Council, Aptis is an e-exam which requires students to address at the test venue and perform with computers connected to the Internet. Although Aptis has just been applied for several years, a wide range of institutions across Vietnam has chosen this form of assessment as a learning outcome regulation and School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University (hereafter called SFL, TNU) is not an exception. However, there is a higher rate of students failing this e-exam compared to paper-based exams. Hence, this research is conducted to explore factors causing SFL – TNU English majored students’ failure and students’ attitudes towards Aptis e-exam. Qualitative and quantitative methods are mixed to analyse data of this research project. The findings show that nervousness, preparation, use of technology, personal problem and test difficulty are main factors causing students’ poor results. It is expected that the results of this paper would contribute to the improvement of the assessment form at SFL - TNU.