ABSTRACT
The rights of test takers violated by having different educational backgrounds and, thus, the imposition of tests based on one type of knowledge, decided groups, is in violation of the rights of those test takers who come from different backgrounds. The issue of the 'rights of test takers' is relatively new; in the past and to a large extent at present, test takers simply had no rights. The power of tests is the fact tests administered by powerful institutions. Lo shows the lack of power of the students in Hong Kong with regard to the English graduating test, together with the dominance of the English language in Hong Kong society, grants the test so much power that the students placed in positions where the unlikely to challenge the roles or messages. Her analysis shows the inferior place of the test taker on the test can already noticed from the type of discourse and genres used in the instructions.
