Assessing grammatical and lexical competence among Honduran lower-secondary students: preliminary validity evidence from the EGLCA-9

Researchers have developed and established preliminary validation for the English Grammatical and Lexical Competence Assessment (EGLCA-9), an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instrument targeting ninth-grade public school students in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Originating from an initial 35-item pilot pool, the instrument was refined through exploratory factor analysis down to a 22-item structure reflecting distinct yet correlated grammatical and lexical dimensions.

Reliable language measurement requires instruments tailored to local curricular and socioeconomic realities rather than unadapted imported tools. Establishing psychometric validity for context-sensitive assessments enables educational leaders to accurately evaluate baseline proficiencies and diagnose instructional gaps. Consequently, these findings lay the operational foundation for targeted curriculum reform and equitable language education benchmarking in public secondary schools.

Development addressed the critical scarcity of locally validated and context-sensitive EFL assessments in the targeted public education setting.

Forward consideration, not a verified fact.