CHUYÊN đề bồi DƯỠNG học SINH GIỎI assessment and testing in EFL class at high school level

HỘI THẢO KHOA HỌC CÁC TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN
KHU VỰC DUYÊN HẢI & ĐỒNG BẰNG BẮC BỘ
LẦN THỨ VIII

CHUYÊN ĐỀ BỒI DƯỠNG HỌC SINH GIỎI

Assessment and Testing in EFL Class at High School Level

Người thực hiện: Nguyễn THỊ CẨM TÚ
Đơn vị: Trường THPT Chuyên Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm - tỉnh Quảng
Nam.

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I. INTRODUCTION
he classroom test is one of the most important aspects of the teaching learning process, and designing the classroom test is one of the most demanding
responsibilities facing school instructors. Unfortunately, most of teachers of
English at Vietnam’s upper-secondary school have had little, if any, preparation
in the craft of wring tests; consequently, the process is not only difficult, it is
also frustrating and often ineffective.
Writing test questions will always be demanding, even for experienced
instructors, but it will be less frustrating for those who know the techniques for
writing specific types of items and have some guidelines for general test
constructions.
The objective test is only of many ways in which students can be
evaluated. Tests can be formal or informal, oral or written; and no one form of
testing is necessarily better or worse than another.
It is useful to consider multiple-choice items in some detail, as they are
undoubtedly one of the most widely used types of items in objective tests.
However, since the multiple-choice item is one of the most difficult and time

-consuming types of items to construct, numerous poor multiple-choice tests
now abound.
In the scope of this paper, we will examine some general principles of
constructing multiple-choice items and try to find out some common problems
in designing multiple-choice questions, then we will give some suggestions for
designing multiple-choice questions.
II. THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSTRUCTING MULTIPLECHOICE ITEMS
A multiple-choice item is composed of two parts: a stem that identifies the
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question or problem, and a set of alternatives or possible answers that contain a
key that is the best answer to the question, and a number of distractors that are
plausible but incorrect answers to the question. Students respond to multiplechoice items by indicating the alternative that they believe best answers or
completes the stem. The task of a distractor is to distract the majority of poor
students (i.e. those who do not know the answer) from the correct option.
According to J. B. Heaton (1988) the general principles should be
observed when multiple-choice items are constructed:
1. Each multiple choice item should have only one answer. This answer
must be absolutely correct unless the instruction specifies choosing the best
option (as in some vocabulary tests). Although it may seem an easy matter, it is
sometimes extremely difficult to construct an item having only one correct
answer.
2. Only one feature at a time should be tested: it is usually less confusing
for the testees and it helps to reinforce a particular teaching point.
3. Each option should be grammatical correct when placed in the stem,
except of course in the case of specific grammar test items. For example, stems
ending with the determiner a, followed by options in the form of nouns or noun
phrases, sometimes traps the unwary test constructor.
4. All multiple-choice items should be at a level appropriate to the

proficiency level of the testees. The context, itself, should be a lower level than
the actual problem which the item is testing: a grammar test item should not
contain other grammatical features as difficult as the area being tested, and a
vocabulary item should not contain more difficult semantic features in the stem
than the area being tested.
5. Multiple-choice items should be as brief and as clear as possible
(though it is desirable to provide short contexts for grammar items).
6. In many tests, items are arranged in rough order of increasing
difficulty. It is generally considered important to have one or two simple items
to ‘lead in’ the testees, especially if they are not too familiar with the kind of test
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being administered. Nevertheless, areas of language which are trivial and not
worth testing should be excluded from the test.
III. SOME COMMON PROBLEMS IN DESIGNING MULTIPLECHOICE QUESTIONS (MCQs)
1. Common problems in designing the stem
a. There appears to have grammatical clues in the options e.g. capital
letters, a or an, etc.
Example:
He was badly injured in an ................ yesterday.
A. traffic jam

B. accident

C. crash

D. collision

The article an in the above question helps the testee easily know the key

(B).
b. The stem does not have sufficient information and it contains words or
phrases which repeated in each option.
Example:
Choose the best option A, B, C or D to complete the following sentence by
circling the letter you choose
He is ................................................. .
A. the man whom I talk about

B. the man which I talk about

C. the man that I talk about

D. the man that I talk

c. The stem is not clear and this makes the testees confused.
Example:
What is not mentioned in the text as one of her excuses?
NOT must be written in capital letter so that the testee can pay attention to
the requirement of question.
d. The stem contains unnecessary information.
Example:
All of the following sentences, which contain relative clauses, are correct
EXCEPT for
A. The suitcase which my father bought was upstairs.
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B. The suitcase my father bought was upstairs.
C. The suitcase bought by my father was upstairs.

D. The suitcase buying my father was upstairs.
“which contain relative clauses” is an unnecessary information, because
the testees can understand the stem without it.
In short, the primary purpose of the stem is to present the problem clearly
and concisely. The testee should be able to obtain from the stem a very general
idea of the problem and the answer required. At the same time the stem should
not contain extraneous information or irrelevant clues, thereby confusing the
problem being tested. Unless students understand the problem being tested, there
is no way of knowing whether or not they could have handled the problem
correctly. Although the stem should be short, it should convey enough
information to indicate the basis on which the correct option should be selected.
2. Common problems in designing the lead-in
The lead-in does not present the problem clearly, sufficiently and
concisely.
Example:
Choose the best answer.
Choose the letter of the best answer.
Choose the correct answer.
Circle the best answer.
These lead-in parts do not provide the criteria for the testees to answer the
questions.
Let’s consider the following lead-in from the TOEFL sample test:

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Questions 1-15 are incomplete sentences. Beneath each sentence you will
see four words or phrases, marked A, B, C, and D. Choose the one word or
phrase that best completes the sentence. Then, on your answer sheet, find the
number of the question and fill in the space that corresponds to the letter of the

answer you have chosen. Fill in the space so that the letter inside the oval cannot
be seen.
This lead-in part is long but sufficient. The testees will know how to do
the test. The lead-in is not necessarily long as in the example above but the
sufficient criteria are prior.
3. Common problems in designing the options (key and distractors)
3.1. The item has more than one correct option (double key).
Example:
Choose from the prepositions marked A, B, C and D the correct one to fill in the
blank by circling the corresponding letter A, B, C or D.
............... weekends, John often goes fishing with his friend George.
A. on

B. in

C. at

D. by

3.2. The item has no correct option (no key).
Example:
Choose one word whose underlined part is pronounced differently from the
others by circling the corresponding letter A, B, C or D.
A. celebration

B. certain

C. century

D. excellent

3.3. The distractors or incorrect options are reasonably unattractive and
implausible.
Example:
He is a very honest man; he never .............. lies.
A. speaks

B. say

C. tells

D. utters

Choice B in the above item is much below the level being tested and will
be eliminated by testees immediately: their chances of selecting the correct
option will then be one in three.
3.4. The options are unparallel.
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Example:
Every atlas has its on legend.
The word legend in this sentence probably means:
A. mythical story

B. famous person

C. A part that explains meanings of symbols

D. special color

Choice C attracts the testees’ attention because it is longer and its
structure is completely different from the others. Thus, the testees tend to choose
this option for their answer (in this case, it is the choice C that is the correct
answer).
IV. CONCLUSION - SUGGESTIONS
The following suggestions for designing MCQs are organized into three
sections: 1) General Strategies, 2) Designing Stems, and 3) Designing
Alternatives.
General Strategies
- Write questions throughout the term. Multiple-choice question exams
are challenging and time-consuming to create. The teacher will find it easier if
he/she writes a few questions each week, perhaps after a lecture when the course
material is still fresh in his/her mind.
- Instruct students to select the “best answer” rather than the
“correct answer”. By doing this, the teacher acknowledges the fact that the
distractors may have an element of truth to them and discourage arguments from
students who may argue that their answer is correct as well.
- Use familiar language. The question should use the same terminology
that was used in the course. Avoid using unfamiliar expressions or foreign
language terms, unless measuring knowledge of such language is one of the
goals of the question. Students are likely to dismiss distractors with unfamiliar
terms as incorrect.
- Avoid giving verbal association clues from the stem in the key. If the
key uses words that are very similar to words found in the stem, students are
more likely to pick it as the correct answer.
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- Avoid trick questions. Questions should be designed so that students

who know the material can find the correct answer. Questions designed to lead
students to an incorrect answer, through misleading phrasing or by emphasizing
an otherwise unimportant detail of the solution, violate this principle.
- Avoid negative wording. Students often fail to observe negative
wording and it can confuse them. As a result, students who are familiar with the
material often make mistakes on negatively worded questions. In general, avoid
having any negatives in the stem or the options. In the rare cases where the
teacher uses negatives be sure to emphasize the key words by putting them in
upper case and bolding or underlining them.
Designing Stems
- Express the full problem in the stem. When creating the item, the
teacher wonders if the students would be able to answer the question without
looking at the options. This makes the purpose of the question clear.
- Put all relevant material in the stem. Do not repeat in each of the
alternatives information that can be included in the stem. This makes options
easier to read and understand, and makes it easier for students to answer the
question quickly.
- Eliminate excessive wording and irrelevant information from the
stem. Irrelevant information in the stem confuses students and leads them to
waste time.
Designing Alternatives
- Limit the number of alternatives. Use between three and five
alternatives per question. Research shows that three-choice items are about as
effective as four or five-choice items, mainly because it is difficult to come up
with plausible distractors.
- Make sure there is only one best answer. Avoid having two or more
options that are correct, but where one is “more” correct than the others. The
distractors should be incorrect answers to the question posed in the stem.

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- Make the distractors appealing and plausible. If the distractors are
farfetched, students will too easily locate the correct answer, even if they have
little knowledge. When testing for recognition of key terms and ideas keep the
distractors similar in length and type of language as the correct solution. When
testing conceptual understanding, distractors should represent common mistakes
made by students.
It is unlikely that students would choose options a, b, c. or d, even if they
didn’t know the answer. A better question would have plausible links between
the stem and the distractors:
- Make the choices grammatically consistent with the stem. Read the
stem and each of the choices aloud to make sure that they are grammatically
correct.
- Place the choices in some meaningful order. When possible, place the
choices in numerical, chronological or conceptual order. A better structured
question is easier to read and respond to.
- Randomly distribute the correct response. The exam should have
roughly the same number of correct answers that are a's, b's, c's, and d's
(assuming there are four choices per question).
- Avoid using “all of the above”. If “all of the above” is an option and
students know two of the options are correct, the answer must be “all of the
above”. If they know one is incorrect, the answer must not be “all of the above”.
A student may also read the first option, determine that it is correct, and be
misled into choosing it without reading all of the options.
- Avoid using “none of the above”. The option “none of the above” does
not test whether the student knows the correct answer, but only that he/she
knows the distractors aren’t correct.
- Refrain from using words such as always, never, all, or none. Most
students know that few things are universally true or false, so distractors with

these words in them can often be easily dismissed.
- Avoid overlapping choices. Make the alternatives mutually exclusive.
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It should never be the case that if one of the distractors is true, another distractor
must be true as well.
- Avoid questions of the form “Which of the following statements is
correct?” There is no clear question being asked, and the choices are often
heterogeneous. Such questions are better presented in the form of True/False
questions.
TỔ NGOẠI NGỮ
THPT CHUYÊN NGUYỄN BỈNH KHIÊM
QUẢNG NAM
REFERENCES
1. Do, T. M. (2005). Designing an Objective English Test at UpperSecondary Schools, VNU, Journal of Science, Foreign Language, T.XXI, No
4AP.
2. ELIN 823 Module 3 (2003). Assessment in the Language Curriculum.
Victoria, University of Wellington.
3. Harris, M. and McCann, P. (1994). Assessment. Macmillan Publishers
Limited.
4. Heaton J. B. (1988). Writing English Language Test. Longman Group
UK Limited Group.
5. Nguyen, Q. T. (2005). Chuẩn đánh giá trong dạy và học ngoại ngữ,
cited in Kỷ yếu Hội thảo Quốc gia “Chuẩn đánh giá và công cụ đo trong đào
tạo cử nhân ngoại ngữ - Lý luận và thực tiễn”. Danang, Vietnam.
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