CHAOS THEORY IN LANGUAGE TESTING: TESTING THE EFFECT OF ITEM ORDERS IN GRADE 8 GUIDANCE SCHOOL LANGUAGE TEST IN IRAN

Testing is an important process, and it can assist learners to identify their skills and knowledge and to plan their future learning. The core issue of this study is the impact of chaos theory on English scores of EFL students. According to the chaos theory, if there is a change in the initial condition, the outcome may be different as well. Therefore, the present study tried to examine if changing the item order of a designed English test can result in achieving different scores. To this aim, 64 secondary school students were selected randomly. First, they took the designed test. Later, the item order of the test was manipulated, and the students took the manipulated test. After 12 days, the statistical comparison of the two sets of scores indicated no significant difference; therefore, changing of the initial conditions had no specific effect on the item order of the test.