Since you would have looked at the questions many times, you need a fresh pair of eyes to test it. It is a good idea to test the efficacy of your questions. Surely you do not want to test their search capabilities. If you vary the length, they will certainly look for terms of that length and fill in. Do not vary it based on the length of the answers. A simple way to ensure that is to keep the length of the blanks consistent. Limit the blanks to a maximum of two per question.Īfter spending time and effort in creating effective questions, you surely wouldn’t want to give out clues to the learners. Also, make sure that your answers are short. So, you may need more than one round of review to refine the question in a way that there is only one answer that fits it. But, at times similar phrases can also fit in. There should be only one right answer for the blank. Ideally, you should leave out keywords for the blank space. Your learners should be able to derive the right answer from the sentence provided. The sentence should make sense even without the term that is supposed to fill up the blank. Mention which topic or process you are referring to, instead of making them guess. Also, provide them with clear instructions on what you are looking for. Don’t confuse them with complex words and sentences. They just need to come up with the correct answer for the blank provided.
You want to test how much your learners have understood the concepts. Simple is always good, well most of the times. Here are a few tips that you can keep in mind for writing the questions. These questions may look easy to create, but you need to put in some thoughts before rolling them out. Top Five Guidelines to Keep in Mind While Creating Fill-In-The-Blank-Type Questions So, they must have access to the source materials before they are asked to answer the question. The basic aim of this format is to encourage learners to apply the knowledge they have already learned. And, the answer should be present in the learning materials. It is important that the questions have only one accurate answer. Use them for situations where you want the learners to supply the answer based on how much they can remember. Source: When Can you Use These Questions?įill-in-the-blank-type questions test the recall power of learners and not their ability to recognize or synthesize.