Designing Effective Test Questions

Role of Examinations

• Examinations determine the success or failure of a student at the end of the year, playing a greater role than tests.

Designing Good Questions

• To construct a valid question paper, the following steps are necessary:
  • Listing the major objectives
  • Defining each objective
  • Writing the table of specifications or blueprint
  • Checklist
• A blueprint is necessary to construct a valid question paper with appropriate weightage, testing various skills of the students.

Characteristics of a Good Test

• A good test synchronizes evaluation with the objectives of teaching English.
• It aims to serve as a yardstick to find out whether the aims have been realized or not.
• It should give various emphases to skills.
• A good test should be highly reliable, yielding essentially the same or consistent score when administered to the same students at multiple times.
• It should be valid, measuring what it is supposed to measure and predicting some criterion.
• A good test should cater for weak, average, and bright students, with a fair mixture of easy, average, and difficult questions.
• It should have a standard procedure in time limit, scoring sheet, and trained tester.
• The question paper should be neither too long nor too short, with clear instructions, definite language, and specified answer lengths.
• The questions should aim to test the real mastery of structures and vocabulary items, rather than testing knowledge of memorized answers.
• A good test must have norms for proper interpretation of the scores.

Learn about the steps involved in designing a valid question paper to evaluate students' performance, including listing objectives, defining objectives, and creating a blueprint for the test.