Post II-2: Past exam questions: Their use for study and revision purposes

Post II-2: Past Exam Questions: Their Use for Study and Revision Purposes.

By

 J.Pendaeli

Revised July 2011

Summary

The author’s intention in this post is to strengthen the students’ knowledge base in questions asked in examinations in general so that students are better prepared to figure out the examiner’s expectations in a given question. The first part of this exercise looks at the basics of examinations.

Read more

Introduction

A common problem in examinations is that students are not always clear about what the examiner expects from them in a given examination question. This 4SDEP study document is an attempt to throw some light on this problem. We start by looking at the basics of examinations.

The basics of examinations

Let’s go back to the basics of examinations the world over; their purpose is to determine or find out to what extent or how much students have learnt in a given topic or course of study, after exposure to and/or participation in some teaching-learning activities and/or study materials. What students are expected to learn in a topic or course of study is stated and/or implied in the statement of topic/course/learning objectives/targets. The message here is that examinations are based directly on course objectives or course targets. However, I must hasten to point out that, in practice, we often encounter cases where examinations are not fully based on sated or implied objectives.

Let us assume that the past examinations we are interested in have been set properly in accordance with examinations protocols. The question is: What can we learn from such examinations?

·         We can learn about the type of questions examiners ask—

-    Description questions

-    Discussion questions

-    Definition questions

-    Comparison questions

-    Explanation questions, and so on. Also the weighting— how many questions of this type and how many questions of that type, etc.

·         We can learn about the intellectual levels at which the exam is testing the students—

-    Knowledge or recall level

-    Comprehension level

-    Analysis level

-    Synthesis level

-    Evaluation level. And also the weighting of these levels.

·         We can learn about the areas of the syllabus/course of study/topic etc which have been covered by the examination

·         We can learn how examiners balance a test or an examination paper in terms of:

= content coverage,

= types of questions asked

= intellectual levels tested

= distribution of marks/points or weighting

= tricks examiners use to avoid unnecessary repetition of questions from year to year or from term to term.

And so on.

A good examination or test question and, indeed, a good examination paper or test paper, focuses on finding out how much or to what extent a student has achieved the intended learning objectives/targets. What this suggests is that if you can answer these questions satisfactorily before the examination you stand a very good chance of doing well in them if and when they appear in the examination or test. Let’s illustrate this point by analyzing and discussing a selection of “good” examination questions from past examination papers to highlight their main features focusing on what the examiner is testing and the level at which (s)he is testing the student. We shall use the list of points above on what we can learn from a past examination question as a tool of analysis.

Example 1:

What do you understand by the term “curriculum change and innovation? Illustrate your answer with examples.

Tool of analysis	Outcome of analysis
1.What type of question this?	It is a description type of question.
2.The achievement of what course objective/target is the question expected to determine?	The course target/objective is:…...the student should be able to: a) recall the definitions of the terms change and innovation and b)point out the differences between them.
3.At what intellectual level is the question testing the student?	At knowledge or recall level as suggested by the action verbs ‘recall’, and ‘point out’. This is the lowest level in one taxonomic hierarchy of intellectual skills.
4.On what topic has the question been set?	On the topic of Curriculum change and innovation
5.The question requires the student to illustrate his/her answer. What is the significance of this?	The significance if this is this: An examinee who can give a good example is likely to have a better mastery of the terms than an axaminee who cannot; in addition to recalling or pointing out the meaning of the term (s)he can show where the term is encountered in practice.

To be continued

 More examples will be given each time the post is revised.