4. Preparing for Multiple Choice Exams

In this section:
Multiple Choice
or Multiple Guess!?
In-test Strategies
for Multiple Choice
Multiple Choice
Question Practice
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Preparing for Essay Style Exams
Multiple Choice
or Multiple Guess!?
The strategies that we have covered thus far should
be helpful in preparing you with the necessary knowledge needed
to succeed with multiple choice exams. For students who lack essential
learning skills or who fail to apply the kinds of active strategies
we have been discussing, multiple choice exams are extremely difficult.
Some students have even gone so far as to label themselves incapable
of writing multiple choice exams effectively. Some have even taken
the step of changing out of a major area of study to avoid having
to take exams in this format. In probably the majority of cases,
these extreme responses are unnecessary; these students would have
done better to examine the way they were preparing and adjusted
their style of learning and studying to equip themselves better
for these often difficult exams. If you're having difficulty with
multiple choice exams, you will probably want to do what you can
to make your situation better.
The reasons why these tests are so difficult have
to do more with the structure of the exams than the level of difficulty
of the material. Many students make the assumption that multiple
choice exams are simple and do not require a rigorous approach to
study. If you can understand not only how to prepare, but how to
approach and analyze the structure of multiple choice questions,
you will have a much clearer sense of how to take the guess work
out of multiple choice exams. In terms of their structure, multiple
choice exams have a few unsavoury characteristics: first, these
tests typically have many questions to answer and the topics you
studied are typically scrambled and shuffled; second, the ideas
you learned about in class or in the text may be reworded in different
ways: colloquially, technically, by example, or by analogy; third,
very often the multiple choice test is not simple recognition of
basic ideas but recognition of the answer to a reasoned problem.
Your reasoning must make use of the learning from the course and
may go beyond the material covered in class or require you to apply
knowledge from the course. You may have to go beyond straight memorization
to make an analogy or to solve a novel problem. You cannot just
be familiar with the material; you must be able to write it down,
talk about it, and analyze it
In-test Strategies
for Multiple Choice
With all these characteristics, it is no wonder
that multiple choice tests are both under-estimated by some students
and revered by others. We begin with a series of in-test strategies
and then apply these to a few example questions, highlighting the
structure and purpose of each question. When appropriate, we mention
additional preparation strategies that could be used to prepare
for the questions:
-
PREVIEW THE EXAM. As you browse through, take
note of those questions which seem easier (i.e., those questions
you think you can answer) and perhaps plan to skip those which
seem harder, setting time limits, and getting settled; keep
to time divisions for questions as they are usually equally
weighted; (see In-test Strategies, page 20.)
-
START WITH QUESTIONS YOU CAN ANSWER READILY.
Don't waste time labouring over troublesome questions at the
start. Be sure to get credit for items you know well.
-
RECYCLE THROUGH THE TEST. Now try the questions
you could not do on the first attempt. Sometimes the answer
will occur to you simply because you are more relaxed after
having answered other questions. Sometimes, too, your answer
to one question provides a clue to the answer of another.
-
SET GOALS FOR TIME AND PACE YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY.
Allocate your time according to the relative worth of questions.
Try to save a few minutes at the end for review and revision.
Remember: your first answer may not always be your best answer.
Change answers, but only if you have a good reason for doing
so. For instance, changing an answer from, say, selection "b"
simply because your response to the previous four questions
was also "b" and you cannot believe that five questions
in a row would have the same item as the correct response, is
likely not a good reason; be flexible in your approach.
-
READ THE QUESTIONS CAREFULLY: twice if necessary.
Avoid jumping to conclusions about what you think the question
asks.
-
CIRCLE OR UNDERLINE KEY WORDS IN QUESTIONS.
Multiple choice tests examine your ability to read carefully
and thoughtfully as much as they test your ability to recall
and reason. Watch for words like "all," "always,"
"never," "none," "few," "many,"
some," "sometimes." (see Descriptive Words, page
13.)
-
TRY TO RECALL A CONCEPT FROM MEMORY or think
out the answer before looking at the options. Doing this successfully
may help you "wade through" the alternatives and find
a reasonable answer or choice.
-
CONSIDER THE COVER-UP STRATEGY, whereby you
read the question and try to answer it by recall before looking
at the alternative answers;
-
CONSIDER THE TRUE/FALSE LABEL STRATEGY whereby
you label the alternative answers as true or false statements
and then look for a pattern in the answers;
-
SOMETIMES ALTERNATIVES DIFFER BY ONLY ONE
OR TWO WORDS or in the order of one or two terms. These can
seem very confusing. It helps sometimes to read the stem of
the question (that's the question part) with an alternative
while covering up the others. By methodically thinking through
the alternatives this way, you may be able to make more sense
of the options by labelling them true or false and eliminating
those that don't correctly complete the question.
-
USE THE HINT OF HIGHLY SIMILAR PAIRS -- this
says that often the answer is imbedded in one of two very similar
pairs and the "most correct" answer is often the one
that correctly uses course terminology; consider the all or
none of the above cues -- if two of the preceding alternatives
are opposites then one of them and the all or none of the above
choice is also wrong;
-
BE PREPARED TO CHANGE YOUR ANSWER if you can
determine a clear reason why your first response is incorrect
-- many students report difficulties arising from changes that
are made on the basis of nervous feelings;
-
YOU MIGHT WANT TO TRY TO ANSWER ALL THE QUESTIONS
FROM THE SAME SECTION OF THE COURSE to offset the mixing of
questions inherent in the design of the test -- this demands
care be taken that answer sheets are correctly completed and
that all questions have been answered; consider guessing when
there is no penalty for a wrong answer.
-
BE ALERT TO TERMINOLOGY WHICH LINKS the alternatives
or questions to key areas of the course, lectures, or chapters
of a course's materials -- this may help you narrow the field
of possible choices and think through to the best answer.
-
BE WARY OF DESCRIPTIVE WORDS which are overly
exclusive or overly inclusive. These absolute terms tend to
portray things as right or wrong where this is often not the
case. Words like always, never, completely, and only are absolutes.
Relative words like often, usually, seem and may are often more
accurate.
-
TRANSLATE DOUBLE NEGATIVE STATEMENTS into
positive ones. Examples like "Not lacking" or "not
none" become "having" and "some" and
this can reduce confusion. Note that these are often partly
in the stem and partly in the choices of a particular question.
-
IF YOU MUST GUESS, look for some of these
possibilities: the style of an answer option is very different
from all of the others - this may disqualify it; the grammar
of the question stem is not in agreement with the grammar of
an alternative; some alternative is not in the area or topic
of the question, but comes from some other part of the course-
this may disqualify it.
-
OVERALL, remember that you are looking
for the best answer, not only a correct one, and not one which
must be true all of the time, in all cases, and without exception.
Multiple Choice
Question Practice
To assist you in applying the strategies we have
been talking about, we have included a set of example questions.
Examine the example questions and the discussion that follows each.
Look for how the questions have been developed and attend to the
in-test and preparation strategies mentioned. By understanding how
multiple choice test questions can be built from course notes, you
may be better able to construct example questions of your own. And,
these example questions should help you to better understand how
to apply the skills that you have been learning throughout these
web-pages.
1. The memory strategy derived from Miller (1956)
involving organizing disparate pieces of information into one related,
meaningful group is referred to as
Question 1 is typical of roughly a third of the
questions you might face on a multiple choice exam in that it tests
knowledge that was explicitly taught in the course lectures and
texts. To answer the question you need not go any further than the
content of your notes or readings, but answering this question correctly
involves recognizing that the question is essentially testing a
definition of a concept. A slight twist in this question is that
the definition is given first and you must label it with the correct
concept word from the list of alternatives. Studying for this question
is fairly straightforward: practice recalling the definitions of
key concepts and practice matching the definitions with the correct
concept word label. A hint for working with this kind of question
in an exam: read the stem of the question first, noting the key
words (here the key words are "Miller, 1956" and "one
related, meaningful group") and try to answer the question
from memory before proceeding to the alternatives. The advantage
of using this approach is that you have an answer in mind to compare
to each alternative -- this often gives you a greater sense of confidence
in your answer and may reduce "second guessing".
2. Which of the following is not related to the
process of elaborative rehearsal?
Question 2 is somewhat different from the first
question, primarily in that it tests in detail the knowledge you
have learned in your course. To answer this question correctly it
is important to note that this kind of question forces you to go
beyond straight memorization of concepts from your course. To prepare
adequately for this kind of question, you will have to look more
deeply at the basic information and you will probably want to apply
strategies which help you elaborate and understand the significance
of finer details which are related to the concepts.
3. In the study by Bahrick and Hall, 1991 we find
that graduates of college mathematics courses recall high school
math knowledge for many years after. According to Bahrick &
Hall, which of the following would you expect to be true of a group
of university graduates who did not take math courses at university:
(a) they would recall their math from high school
to essentially the same extent as those who took math courses
in university
Question 3 is representative of a third kind of
question you are likely to face when writing a multiple choice exam.
This question is different from the first two in that it involves
applying the knowledge you have learned or thinking about it in
a new way which may not have been taught explicitly in your course.
This question tests your ability to reason through the relationship
between a theory and evidence which was used to support it and apply
this understanding to cope with a hypothetical situation. (Note,
as well, that this question is a good deal longer than either of
the first two questions and that the options are a little more tricky.)
To answer this question well, you will have to be thoroughly knowledgeable
about the theory and its actual findings and then be able to apply
this knowledge to determine a possible outcome for the hypothetical
situation offered. Studying for this kind of question should probably
include elaborative review and practice recall of the theory and
perhaps some creative thinking about what might change in a variety
of slightly different circumstances from those presented in the
theory.
If you were to face a question like this one in
an exam, you might want to start by reading this question twice
to be sure that you have correctly understood what is being asked.
The question stem is made up of two parts: the context reference
for the question, which tells us to think back to something we have
studied (here it is Bahrick and Hall's 1991 study of periodic retrieval);
and the question part. You might want to pause after the first part
of the question stem to recall the study done by Bahrick and Hall
before moving on any further. Because of the length of the alternatives
in this question, you might want to read the question part of the
stem along with each alternative individually to keep clear on what
you are being asked. This kind of question seems to pop up more
and more in multiple choice exams and chances are you will eventually
face a test with questions like this. Questions like this one are
thinker questions and you can probably see how simply memorizing
the definition for "periodic retrieval" would leave you
less than prepared to answer question 3. (Answers: 1(d); 2(e); 3(d))
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Preparing for Essay Style Exams
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