ESL EFL Writing Tests

The Objective Multiple Choice Test

The objective type test may be of the short answer type or the choice item type. A number of studies have considered the relative validities of short answers and choice items.  Cook (1955) found that the correlation between scores of knowledge of contemporary affairs for college students and multiple-choice test over the same item of information was so high, when correlated for attenuation, that it was impossible to say that the two tests were measuring two different kinds of achievement.  Hurlburt (1954) on the other hand, reported significant differences between completion and multiple-choice tests as measures of precise knowledge of word meaning.

Short answer questions

The short answer items require the learner to write a word, phrase, number or symbol, while the choice items ask him to choose one of the many alternatives given in the test item itself.  The short answer type questions may be of the recall of a word or number.  The choice items often present new problem situations and suggest alternatives, which the examinee has never seen before.  So they call for more than recognition.

Short answer questions make a heavy demand on the test constructor because of two reasons:

  i.       He must concentrate on detailed and highly specific questions to which brief but quite unique verbal or numerical answers can be given.

ii.       He must be prepared to deal with frequent and difficult decisions as to whether a given answer is just barely adequate or not quite adequate.

Choice items may be one of the following types:

$              Classification

$              Matching

$              Multiple-choice

$              True / false

$              Rearrangement items.

The advantages of the choice items are as follows:

Choice items can be made very difficult, without involving ambiguity and as searching of high levels of competence as items in any other form.

To make wise choices it is necessary to perceive clearly the implications or implications or consequences of choosing each alternative.

Multiple choice items

A number of books discuss the construction and administration of multiple choice items.  ‘Language Testing’ by Robert lado (1961), ‘Modern Language Testing’ :  ‘A Handbook’ by Rebecca Valette (1967), ‘Testing English as a Second Language’ by David Harris (1969), Foreign Language Testing : Theory and Practice by John Clark (1972), ‘Testing and Experimental Methods’ by J P B Allen and Alan Davies (1977), Revision of Modern Language Testing by Valette (1977) are some of the important books which deal with the construction of discrete point tests.

Discrete point multiple-choice tests assess one skill at a time, listening, speaking, reading or writing.  They assess only one aspect of the skill – i.e.  productive versus receptive, oral versus visual, etc.  They attempt to focus attention on one point of grammar at a time.  Each test item is aimed at one element of a particular component of a grammar item.  According to Lado (1961) within each skill, aspect and component, discrete items focus on precisely one and only one phoneme, morpheme, lexical item, grammatical rule or whatever the appropriate element may be.

Remmers and Adkins (1942) studied the reliability of multiple-choice tests as a function of the number of responses per item.  They found that reduction in the number of distracters tended to lower the test reliability.  Spearman - Brown formula gave reasonable good predictions of the reduced reliability when distracters were eliminated at random.  Williams and Ebel (1957) started with four-response forms by systematically eliminating the least effective distracter. They found that in a test period of fixed time limit, a greater number of two response items would produce more reliable scores than a smaller number of three of four response items.  According to Weitzman and Ellis (1946) the essential characteristics of the distracters of multiple-choice items is that they should be plausible to those who lack the knowledge or ability for which the item is testing.  Hence a lot of care should be put into the selection of the distracters.

Drawbacks of discrete item tests

The construction of multiple-choice items is very difficult.  Lot of care needs to be taken while preparing the ‘stem’ or the main sentence and the different choices from which the learner has to select one.  The main sentence or question should be unambiguous and explicit.  All the choices should look plausible for those who lack the knowledge.  At the same time there should not be more than one correct answer.

Standardizing discrete item tests require pre-testing, statistical evaluation and rewriting techniques, which is quite time-consuming and require a lot of technical knowledge.  Hence it is not practical for and ordinary classroom teacher who may not have the time or technical skill to prepare these discrete item multiple-choice tests.

John W Oller Jr. (1979) criticizes the discrete item tests.  According to him discrete point tests view language as form and usage rather than of process and use.  In actual language use, language is not used in bits and pieces.  A proficient user of language is not overtly conscious of the isolated phonemes or graphemes or any such bits of language.  Again proficiency in using isolated bits does not indicate that the learner can put together these bits and use the language for communication.  To test language as communication we need to think of a different kind of test, which tests the learners’ ability to use the language.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions post them on my blog and I will respond to you: What to Pursue Blog