Whats the best way to guess your way through a multiple choice test. - Page 2

Man, your Chinese test had multiple choice? Lucky bastard. Mine was a 2.5 hour nightmare of dictation, translation, and essay writing. And this was 101 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But seriously, some things in Chinese can guessed by looking at how the letters are written

 

Edited by Parall3l - 1/12/12 at 3:10am

^Agree.

 

If you're having trouble with words like "dog" then yes, that's really basic level and the characters don't get reduced much further than that. But once you get past that you'll notice similarities between various characters based on the "side" and "top" of the character, e.g. "dog" and "cat" share the same "left side", which may help you guess that a character with that "left side" refers to an animal.

I once answered all True on a T/F false test and got 87%

So it wasn't a true/false test... it was a "mostly true" test. :D

As a college professor, I write many tests.  There are certain approaches to writing multiple choice tests that we are supposed to adhere to.  For starters, you are supposed to select "the best" answer.  There is no answer that will be correct 100% of the time under every scenario.

 

The incorrect answers are called distracters.  If you make a question with 5 possible answers, there should be 4 distracters and 1 correct answer.  One distracter is so wrong, you should recognize it right away.  Two more distracters are related to the topic, but are either wrong every time or at least part of the time.  The goal is to narrow your answer choice down to two options.  One is more correct than the other.  One answer may correct some time, but you need to select the answer that is correct more of the time.

 

In general for Chinese, you can look at the different parts and say them out loud, and the central piece will generally sound similar to the actual word, or may have a similar meaning. It's not nearly as random as you make it out to be. 

 

Also, to the OP, what I do is if I have one I don't know, I answer it such that the distribution between answer choices is most even overall.

 

I like the ideas offered. I love the three-handed method of cheating in the photo.

My approach to multiple guess:

1. Scan the answers first.
2. Read the "required" part of the question. It's at the very bottom of the question.
3. Read the question.
4. If you know the answer pick it.
5. If you don't know the answer...
a. Eliminate known wrong answers.
b. Get it down to two possible right answers, then pick the first of these.
c. If you know nothing at all about the answer... quiz makers often use two distractors that are different (distractors are wrong answers) and then one distractor that is similar to the correct answer. If two answers are similar, pick the first one.

Here's a multiple guess quiz you can try:

http://www.homeworkgrader.com/HomeworkGrader/TakeATest.cfm?EnterRecommendedPoints=No&TestSelected=10165