An Analysis of Questions of English Papers of FBISE for HSSC in the Light of Bloom’s Classification of Cognitive Domain

Abstract

This study aims at analyzing questions of English examination papers of higher secondary school exams administered by Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (FBISE) via Blooms' taxonomy of cognitive domain. It further investigates whether the rhetoric of higher order cognitive skills in Pakistani National Policy on Education (2009), has decreased proportions of questions assessing lower order cognition or increased proportions of questions assessing higher order cognition in the examination. All the questions of English examination papers of the first annual examination of the first year and second year from 2015-2019, set according to new syllabus of Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education were analyzed for this study. An analysis sheet was employed for the study which already has been used by many previous researcher studies. Percentages and frequencies were measured to analyze the data. The findings indicate that lower levels of thinking skills were given preference to higher levels of thinking skills in the questions of English papers from 2015-2019. Moreover, the comparison of the findings for part I and II show that the distribution of Bloom‟s cognitive levels is different in the questions of English examination papers of HSSC I and HSSC II examination from 2015 to 2019. The analysis reveals that FBISE has taken no significant steps after the recommendations of Pakistani National Policy on Education (2009).