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

[Head Injury]

Quote:

Yea but it doesn't work on language courses. I once forgot to study for my chinese test and theres no way anyone could know which answers are incorrect. 

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

 

[beamthegreat]

Quote:

There is always a way to eliminate at least one answer. Unless by "forgot to study" you also didn't attend the class, or read the textbook, or do any of the exercises throughout the year and thus had no idea about the language at all.

I don't think its possible to eliminate any question off the chinese vocab test at all. How can you guess the meaning of a character that you haven't ever heard of in your life before?? I sometimes mix up the meaning of the characters in my test even when I studied it sometimes! For example, if this character: 狗 showed up on a chinese test and asked whether it means a dog, cat, fish, or a goat, theres no way you will be able to eliminate any choices out. 

 

[beamthegreat]

Quote:

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

Yea, but there are some parts on my exam that has multiple choice, although most of it is translating sentences and writing an essay. I dropped my 3rd language class after 8th grade since it way wayyyy too hard for me. Now I also made another bad decision by learning Japanese last year in my 10th grade. I thought it would be easier since I just had to know some basic hiragana characters to form vocabs however, when I had to learn the kanji characters, I immediately regretted taking it.

 

[Parall3l]

 
 
 
 
 
 

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

 

[144004]

^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.

 

[Draygonn]

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

 

[liamstrain]

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

 

[hodgjy]

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.

 

[50an6xy06r6n]

Quote:

I don't think its possible to eliminate any question off the chinese vocab test at all. How can you guess the meaning of a character that you haven't ever heard of in your life before?? I sometimes mix up the meaning of the characters in my test even when I studied it sometimes! For example, if this character: 狗 showed up on a chinese test and asked whether it means a dog, cat, fish, or a goat, theres no way you will be able to eliminate any choices out. 

 
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.
 

 

[markw707]

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

 

[LovelyRainbow]

What i do is try to make it a 50 50 chance on the correct answer. What i mean is try to take out the answers that dont have things in common with the other 4 answers. sometimes i get it right. sometimes... Good luck lol 

 

[Claritas]

Once, in secondary school, I was running a high enough average in a particular class that I'd pass regardless of how well I did on the final. So I answered B for all 100 questions, and to the consternation of the teacher left for the day after 6 minutes. As precisely 40 answers were B, I got a 40.

 

[Toxic Dawn]

Very funny...

 

[Phait]

Agreeing with nikp, look for the options that are repeated the most in the answers.
This is especially helpful with answers like:
 
1. a  & b
2. a, b, & c
3. b & d
4. b, c & d
5. all of the above

 

[knowitmall]

Look, you study for the exam like a normal human being you couldn't get less than 50% of it correct. The answers you can't guess your way through are always 'C', this gives you roughly another 20-25%. Eliminating the answers with 'never, always, often & seldom' plus choosing longer answers gives you a 2-5%. So now you have 75-80% congrats