Using an instructional program of test taking strategies to improve secondary school students' EFL acheivement and reduce their test anxiety level

This study examined the effectiveness of using an instructional program of test taking strategies to improve secondary students’ EFL achievement and reduce their test anxiety level. The study adopted the quasi experiemental design. The sample consisted of 160 1^st year secondary stage students. The participants were divided into two groups, one control group and the experiemental group. The two groups received pre- and post-administration of the study instruments. To fulfill the purpose of the research study, the researcher adopted two instruments; a pre/post EFL achievement test to measure EFL achievement and a pre/post test anxiety scale (TAS) to measure test taking anxiety level. The results of the study indicated that the proposed instructional program was effective in improving secondary students’ EFL achievement and reducing their test anxiety level. This can be assured by the following points: (a) the experimental group outperformed the control group in the post administration of the EFL achievement test and the test anxiety scale, (b) the experimental group students’ mean score in the post administration of the study instruments were much better than their mean scores in the pre administration of the instruments. It is recommended that teachers of EFL should be alert to the importance of test-anxiety, which may affect students' EFL achievement test scores, and be aware of developing their students’ skills during EFL testing.