Professional Development

In this short video, I'm going to be talking about language in questions. The advice I'm going to give you today was put together by academic researcher and question writer Zeek Sweiry.

So, the first thing that I want to talk about when it comes to language in questions is command words. So, the command word in the question is a really key word for students to home in on. The command word is telling the student what the task is. They can vary from quite simplistic things, such as state or give, all the way through to more complicated, more complex tasks, such as compare or justify. So, that command word is explicitly telling the student what we're looking for in their response. We generally put them fairly early on in the question so that students pick up quite early on what the task is, and they can build their understanding of that question after hearing that command word.

So, what we want to do with command words is we want to use them really consistently. You can find these for your subject on our website. So, it's worth having a look and making sure that you're really familiar with them so that you can also share them with your students, so they know when they see that command word, what exactly what's expected of them in that example.

So, when we're thinking about language in questions, what we really want to make sure is that the difficulty in answering that question should solely be in answering the question. It should not be in understanding what the question is asking. So, we want to make sure that the language used is very accessible. Reading ability shouldn't be a barrier for answering our questions. So, in order to do this, one of the things we want to be mindful of is word difficulty. Now, you might think that word difficulty is often to do with the length of the word, but actually, it's more to do with familiarity. So, the amount that it's used in English language. So, what we advise to our question writers is; when you are looking at words, have a look to see is there any one that looks a bit difficult; and is there a more frequent word that you could replace with it? For example, instead of using 'enhanced', would it be better to use 'improved', because it's more frequently used in the English language, and therefore, more accessible to students.

So, the second thing to be aware of when we're thinking about language in questions is difficulty at sentence level. Sentences which have many ideas in them, which are what we refer to as propositionally dense, are more difficult to understand than sentences with just a single idea. So, what we advise to our question writers is to have shorter sentences with one idea. Sometimes, this means slightly more text in the question, but it actually makes it easier to understand for students.

Given what we were talking about in the earlier video, about working memory demands, we're always mindful about the amount of text we give students in our questions. Here is an example question where the text can be safely reduced. Say, for example, here 'possible' and 'selecting where they sit in the cinema' are somewhat superfluous. The question can be safely shortened to 'give two advantages to customers who wish to use this method'.

The other thing to consider with sentence difficulty is the length of the sentence. So, whilst generally shorter sentences are easier to comprehend, it is not always the case. So, here we have two sentences that were used in a study, and in this study they were testing seven-year-olds’ reading ability. What they found in the study is that students’ comprehension of who was wearing the blue dress was actually much better in the second example. What had happened by shortening the sentence, that's driven a bit of ambiguity, and that second, longer sentence, is much clearer. We need to be particularly mindful of shortening sentences in instances like this question. 'Suggest one reason why' is problematic, because it's actually a bit ambiguous about what this question is asking. For example, in this question, it's not clear what exactly the sentence refers to. It could be any of the preceding statements. ‘Why did the first child develop chickenpox?’ ‘Why is the first symptom of chickenpox spots on the body, etc.?’ So, in order to make the question really clear, we should include the full question; 'suggest one reason why about two-thirds of the children develop chickenpox'.

Here is another example question, where question clarity has been lost. So, in this example, we've avoided that ambiguity by explicitly linking to the earlier part of the question. However, it has introduced a new problem. Is the focus of the question on why patients are not allowed to eat before the test? Or, why they're not allowed to eat for 12 hours before the test, i.e., rather than six or three? Each interpretation would have a very different answer.

Sentence-level ambiguity can be very difficult to spot. Here is another example of ambiguity. The phrase 'only slowly' is key here. In fact, the word 'only’ is pivotal. It means a question is about the rate at which people accept the theory; why was it only slowly accepted? If the word 'only' is admitted, then the rate element disappears, and the question is about reasons why it was accepted, separate from how slowly it happened. Because sentence-level ambiguity is difficult to spot, sometimes the most effective way to find it is to have a reviewer, separate to the question writer, look at the question without them asking.

So, in summary, here are some take-home messages for language in questions. Ensure students understand the meaning of command words. Always use simpler language that conveys the same meaning. Shorter sentences are generally preferable, but not always. Always watch out for ambiguity. So, I hope this video gives you some insight into the work we do to make sure that our questions are easy to understand for students.