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Matching Questions continued...

Advantages of matching questions

Directions: Match the quotation in column I with the literary school with which it is associated listed in column II. Items in column two may be used more than once.

Column I Column II
  1. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it
    Hold
    Its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds.
    Every dog has a stitch in time. Two heads? You've been
    Sold
    One good turn. One good turn deserves a bird in the
    hand.
  1. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
    Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
    But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
    Wherewith the seasonable month endows
    The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wile;
    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
    Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
    And mid-May's eldest child,
    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
  1. . frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the
    strength those engines have in them like big giants and
    the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the
    end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng the poor men that
    have to be out all the night from their wives and families
    in those roasting engines stifling it was today Im glad I
    burned the half of those old Freemans and Photo Bits
    leaving things like that lying about hes getting very
    careless
  1. Twit twit twit
    Jug jug jug jug jug jug
    So rudely forc'd
    Tereu
  1. A perfect Judge will read each Work of Wit
    With the same Spirit that its Author writ,
    Survey the Whole, nor seek slight Faults to find,
    Where Nature moves, and Rapture warms the Mind;
  1. Romanticism
  2. Modernism
  3. Neo-classicism
  4. Post-modernism
  5. Humanism
  6. Classical realism

 

Matching questions are particularly good at assessing a student's understanding of relationships. They can test recall by requiring a student to match the following elements:

Definitions - terms
Historical events- dates
Achievements - people
Statements- postulates
Descriptions - principles (McBeath , 1992)

They can also assess a student's ability to apply knowledge by requiring a test-taker to match the following:

Examples - terms
Functions - parts
Classifications - structures
Applications - postulates
Problems - principles (McBeath , 1992)

Matching questions are really a variation of the multiple choice format. If you find that you are writing MCQs which share the same answer choices, you may consider grouping the questions into a matching item. Tips for writing good matching questions include:

  • Provide clear directions
  • Keep the information in each column as homogeneous as possible
  • Allow the responses to be used more than once
  • Arrange the list of responses systematically if possible (chronological, alphabetical, numerical)
  • Include more responses than stems to help prevent students using a process of elimination to answer question.

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