An international framework and a local standardised test: A former item writer’s autoethnography

Authors

Xuan Minh Ngo, University of St AndrewsFollow

Abstract

A recent trend dominating education worldwide is the enactment of external accountability frameworks and standards-based assessment. Likewise, in language education, international standards like the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) have been increasingly used for local standardised test development and alignment. However, there has been little research into the application of the CEFR in item writing, the activity of creating new items and associated materials, in local standardised testing contexts. To bridge this gap, the current autoethnography shares my firsthand experience of writing items for a locally developed CEFR-aligned standardised English test in Vietnam. By combining evocative and analytic autoethnography, I aim to achieve two simultaneous aims. My first goal is to offer insight into a prevalent but not unproblematic practice of borrowing international standards to develop local high-stakes tests from the perspective of an item writer. Second, my item writing vignettes serve to demonstrate the advantages of autoethnography over other methodological approaches in investigating research contexts where access to suitable participants is particularly challenging.

Keywords

autoethnography, CEFR, standardised testing, item writing, standards-based assessment, EFL, Vietnam

Author Bio(s)

Xuan Minh Ngo is an Associate Lecturer in International Education and TESOL at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK. Minh is interested in using qualitative approaches to explore the intersection of language assessment, language policy, and teacher education. His works have been published in System, Language Teaching Research, English Today, Asian Englishes, Asian EFL Journal, Journal of World Languages, and recent Routledge, Springer, and Cambridge edited collections. Minh also serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of AsiaTEFL.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the editors and reviewers of the Qualitative Report for their constructive feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Recommended APA Citation

Ngo, X. (2025). An international framework and a local standardised test: A former item writer’s autoethnography. The Qualitative Report, 30(3), -. Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol30/iss3/4

ORCID ID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0252-3513

ResearcherID

KUD-4113-2024