Revisiting Basic Test Construction

Post date: Mar 23, 2015 9:01:11 AM

By: Mr. Roylan T. dela Cruz

Teacher III, BNHS

As a Teacher, part of our duty is to prepare assessment for our students to test them on three principles. According to Mr. Abelardo B. Medes of the DepEd, we assess our students based on the Principles of learning that is Assessment as Learning, for Learning, and of Learning. Assessment is a design to measure the learners’ achievement at the end of a unit, module and quarter to determine what he/she has learned in comparison with content and performance standards. It is also for the results serve as the bases of grades which are communicated to learners and parents.

Come to think of it. How could we better understand assessment? How could we do a good question? Let’s start with the basic part of a good question. Its parts are shown below.

1. Clues- Serves as a deciding statement in a question.

2. Clinch- Is the statement of the question itself.

3. Stem- The stem refers to the whole question

To make a good question, we have to remember and follow General Rules on Making a Good Question from the lesson with the same title. Listed below are the Six Basic Rules to remember in Making an Item for Test Question:

1. Distribute your item according to abilities measured in terms of Cognitive, Affective and Psychomotor abilities and on the Level of Strands or Level of Assessment base on the K to 12 Curriculum (DepEd order No. 73 s. 2012).

1. Always remember that each item should have only one correct answer.
2. Providing cues for the correct answer, dependent items where one item cues another item and give away answers should be avoided.
3. You have to follow rules on grammar and syntax. Avoid using complex sentence structure and unclear words.
4. Do not use negatives and direct quotations.
5. Do not cry out for trivial, ambiguous or double meaning word, and meaningless answers.