Shardha SANDAPEN
2 October 2007
Port Louis — "I keep six honest serving men, (They taught me all I knew) Their names are What, Why and When, And How and Where and Who." (Rudyard Kipling, 1902)
Like Rudyard Kipling, teachers also recognise the importance of questions. Research has revealed that teachers can ask up to several hundred questions per day. The purpose of these questions, among other things, is to arouse interest, summarise major points, encourage discussion, stimulate inquiry, check on class progress, routines and behaviours, maintain attention and evaluate learning.
Hence, while setting the question papers at the end of the year, we should be very careful while planning and selecting the questions that we want to set to our learners. Firstly, we need to plan questions, which are matched to the main points we wish learners to develop. Noting down the main facts, concepts and generalisations will enable us to draft key questions to elicit these facts, concepts and generalisations from our students. However, we should avoid focusing our questions on trivial facts that do not reflect the thrust of the material, which we wish to include in the question paper.
Our next step is to plan questions based on both lower and higher cognitive levels. Questions are usually divided into two broad categories: fact and higher cognitive level. This division is based on Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive learning (refer to last week's article "Setting the question paper"). Fact questions equate to the knowledge level and involve the recall of information. An example of a fact question is: " In which year did the Dutch land in Mauritius?"
Whereas, higher cognitive level questions are drawn from one of the other five levels of the taxonomy - comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. A higher cognitive level question involves some independent thinking by the learner; the amount will vary according to the match with the taxonomy. For example, "Why did the Dutch finally leave the island?"
Thus, in planning our questions, we should generally aim to include some higher cognitive level questions, depending upon the level of our learners and the topics or the chapters covered. These can be as many as half the total number. Also, when planning the higher cognitive level questions, we should consider the kinds of responses which students might give, as it will enable us to adapt to students' responses during the correction of the question paper, much easier.
In addition to including a number of higher cognitive level questions in planning the question paper, we should also sequence them in order of difficulty. Thus, it is a good idea to start with fact questions and gradually introduce higher cognitive level questions of increasing difficulty. This gives every student the opportunity to achieve success. For example, in an English Language paper, a multiple choice question or a true/false question will come before a short answer or an open-ended question.
Finally, we should not forget to check if the questions that have been set are clear and suited to the level and ability of our learners. We should also make sure that they are not ambiguous and are phrased in simple, concise language to assist comprehension.
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