![]() Statement of the Problem In this paper we will be tracing the points of strength and weakness in the school certificate English examinations in Sudan and Jordan, to measure the degree of consistency of the educational objectives of the English language syllabus as reflected by scholastic achievement examinations in both countries. The study yielded many other findings but the most important is the negligence of testing speaking and listening skills which renders the standardized English language examinations in Sudan and Jordan to be incomprehensive, but on the other hand the study revealed that these examinations had some content validity. We found that most of the reading questions in EL examination focus on testing the low order of thinking such as knowledge and comprehension which negatively affect the critical thinking abilities among these young learners. These tests can be used as benchmark for the effectiveness of the teaching and the learning performance in the classroom. These examinations are expected to have some beneficial washback on English pedagogy in general and on reading and writing skills in particular. We intended to find out the level of consistency between the educational objectives of the English language syllabus and the English language examinations in these two countries. It is also hoped to improve language assessment in similar educational environments in the Arab world. This study emerges from the need of English Language Teachers in Sudan and Jordan to lay appropriate assessment strategies to meet the anticipated educational objectives among the learners of English. Thus, the findings of this study might render some pedagogical implications for both teachers and learners, especially in writing argumentative essays, and ideas for future research. Surprisingly, both groups had avoided the base form of lexical verb (VVO) in their essays. Albeit, this analysis revealed that both Band 5 and Band 3 essays employed four types of lexical verbs, namely past tense (VVD),-" ing " form (VVG), past participle (VVN) and –s form (VVZ), it was apparent that the lexical verb form of past tense (VVD) was underused by both groups (11 and 20 occurrences respectively). As a descriptive analysis and corpus-based study, the use of lexical verb forms was examined via a computer-assisted corpus analysis, reflecting the learners' knowledge of applying this linguistic constituent into their written essays. ![]() Subsequently, the lexical verbs utilized in the respective essays were compared. For this purpose, using a compiled representative learner corpus, a preliminary study is conducted to investigate the linguistic features lexical verbs used in Band 5 and Band 3 argumentative essays produced by students of a pre-university college in Malaysia. Conversely, limited studies have been conducted on the written discourse of the MUET argumentative essay at pre-university level. ![]() Accordingly, there are numerous studies on argumentative essays which demonstrate the increased interest in linguistic features. ![]() ![]() Argumentative writing is regarded as an essential form of written discourse in Malaysia, specifically in Malaysian University English Test (MUET). ![]()
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