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May 3, 2008 20:31:04 GMT
Post by Tone on May 3, 2008 20:31:04 GMT
There was a quiz question on the National Lottery Show on television tonight.
The question was: "What does Biannual mean?". The offered answers were: A Every two years B Every other year C Twice a year
OK. The answer's trivial as C. But it seems an odd (loaded?) question because, to me, surely A and B mean the same thing as each other? (Which would, of course, be "biennial".)
Tone
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May 3, 2008 22:07:55 GMT
Post by Barry on May 3, 2008 22:07:55 GMT
It's one of those multiple-choice bloopers that sometimes happens (and that I spend ages warning people about when they ask for my advice on question construction). The correct answer can be deduced from the other answers:
two of the answers mean the same thing; there can be only one correct answer; these two, therefore, must both be wrong.
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May 4, 2008 5:20:20 GMT
Post by Dave on May 4, 2008 5:20:20 GMT
Semiannual or half-yearly are used to avoid the confusion.
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May 4, 2008 13:32:24 GMT
Post by Dave M on May 4, 2008 13:32:24 GMT
> Semiannual ... to avoid the confusion <
Mmm ... either people know, or they don't. We should write for people who may be unsure. I can imagine the line of thought which goes: if something is annual, it manages to happen once a year. If something is only half that ...
I'd cut the pompous construction and say "twice a year".
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May 4, 2008 13:43:21 GMT
Post by Geoff on May 4, 2008 13:43:21 GMT
Barry,
If you have some ideas about the writing of multi-choice questions, what's your opinion of choices where one is considered to be more correct than another. Can you have degrees of correctness in this sense?
I've mentioned before how much hot water I used to get into when I was teaching and had some responsibility for the vetting of exam questions being prepared for a question bank. I strongly objected to questions of the type above.
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May 4, 2008 16:44:41 GMT
Post by Dave M on May 4, 2008 16:44:41 GMT
I have particular problems with questions that expect a specific answer, but are phrased so that the expected answer is NOT actually correct. For example:
Can you name the capital city of Chile? - for which the correct answer in my case is "no", and in anyone else's case can only ever be of the type "yes", "no", "I think so", etc.
In Roman numerals, what number is expressed as MCMDCCIV? - to which the answer is of course MCMDCCIV.
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May 4, 2008 20:16:00 GMT
Post by Tone on May 4, 2008 20:16:00 GMT
Pointless fact number 4,271:
If you accept that "M" wasn't an original Roman Numeral (but was added later), and if you then use all of the letters once only, you get DCLXVI. Now work that out in "normal" numbers!
Tone
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May 4, 2008 20:56:19 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 4, 2008 20:56:19 GMT
The Mark of the Beast!
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May 4, 2008 21:38:09 GMT
Post by Sue M-V on May 4, 2008 21:38:09 GMT
Dave M: handy examples! I might borrow those. One of the things I do from time to time with classes is to get them to choose different texts to work on in groups and make up their own questions for. My point is that school text books are full of inane questions that seem to be there to make the number up (how come there are always exactly ten comprehension questions that can be asked of any given text?), and that one can actually learn a lot more by asking questions than by answering them.
The students need a great deal of advice to avoid asking exactly the sort of daft questions they're used to from the books! Once they get going, though, they really get into it. In phase two the questions are answered by all the groups; in phase three they're marked by the question setters, and in phase four we discuss what were the good questions and why.
Sue
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May 4, 2008 21:53:04 GMT
Post by Paul Doherty on May 4, 2008 21:53:04 GMT
I do like the sound of your lessons, Sue.
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May 5, 2008 10:28:39 GMT
Post by Barry on May 5, 2008 10:28:39 GMT
In general, I'm not a lover of multiple-choice questions. They have their uses, and, as assessment instruments, they have a reasonable validity - but I think they often bring more problems than they solve.
Geoff, yes, indeed, the 'one answer is 'righter' than another' option is annoying. Under certain circumstances it can work, because the testing concept (that is, the understanding by the pupil of what is actually required) is generally understood by all, but I'm not sure whether even this latter 'understanding' can be completely guaranteed.
I recently had to help an organisation write some multiple-choice exam questions for what are essentially a set of skills. I did my best for them, but my main advice was along the lines of 'well, I wouldn't start from here!'. Multiple choice questions are best at assessing straightforward knowledge (i.e. whether candidates know a fact), and, to some extent, they assess understanding; but they certainly can't assess skills.
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May 5, 2008 12:53:52 GMT
Post by Gabriel-Ernest on May 5, 2008 12:53:52 GMT
I heartily agree with Barry with what he says about multiple choice questions: they certainly can't assess skills.
I was amazed to read recently a newspaper report that, here in the UK, school children who study a foreign language will no longer be required to submit to an oral test as it would be too ‘stressful’. I was further amazed (nay astounded, not to say gob-smacked) to learn that part of their written exam is multiple choice! Do they use multiple choice phrase-books do you think?
Am I alone in thinking that this is worse than useless in equipping a young person to communicate in a foreign language? I would have thought that the most successful progression would be: speak it, read it, write it. Sue, your opinion would be of great value on this topic.
G-E.
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May 5, 2008 16:08:13 GMT
Post by Barry on May 5, 2008 16:08:13 GMT
G-E,
You're not alone.
There's a massive problem with MFL teaching in the UK. The take-up by students is reducing year on year - fewer people are opting to learn a modern foreign language. The powers that be are doing all they can to attract young people to the subject, and I suspect that this may be one weapon in their armoury. I don't approve, however; as always, one has to ask oneself: 'what is the point of doing this?' If the point of learning a foreign language is to be able to speak it, then I think losing any kind of incentive/requirement to do so is somewhat foolish. It doesn't help, of course, that one can increasingly get away with speaking/writing English just about anywhere these days.
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May 5, 2008 16:23:28 GMT
Post by Geoff on May 5, 2008 16:23:28 GMT
Barry, Under certain circumstances it can work I find it interesting that you say that because I would have thought if there were two correct answers, how could the student be penalised if he chose the 'less correct' one. I can tell you, I really felt for some students when I had to interview them after failing an exam.
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May 5, 2008 18:03:16 GMT
Post by Bertie on May 5, 2008 18:03:16 GMT
There's a massive problem with MFL teaching in the UK. The take-up by students is reducing year on year - fewer people are opting to learn a modern foreign language. On a completely side-note, is it not more usual to introduce the phrase first and then subsequently to use the initialisation?
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