
ERIC Number: ED140645
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1976
Pages: 16
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
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Available Date: N/A
An Attempt to Classify and Evaluate Distractors in Tests of Listening and Reading Comprehension.
Culhane, P. T.
Distractors, the incorrect responses to an item on a multiple-choice test, should be designed to create confusion in the minds of some students and to permit a competent student to be able to see that they are wrong. It is possible, by close scrutiny, to isolate the sources of this confusion and, by looking at a statistical analysis, to find out which types are most effective. This paper addresses itself to the first of these tasks. An attempt is made to classify distractors by finding out what they are dependent upon, and by inspecting the types of confusion they elicit. Examples are drawn from tests for students of Russian. (Author/CFM)
Descriptors: Error Analysis (Language), Interference (Language), Item Analysis, Language Instruction, Language Tests, Listening Comprehension, Listening Comprehension Tests, Multiple Choice Tests, Objective Tests, Reading Comprehension, Russian, Second Language Learning, Test Construction, Test Items, Test Validity, Testing
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: N/A
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
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Author Affiliations: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the annual conference of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (September 1976)