著者

卯城 祐司 中川 知佳子 森本 由子 土方 裕子 渡邊 芙裕美 甲斐 あかり

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, pp.201-210, 2008-03

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There has been much research conducted to compare open-ended and multiple-choice tests from the viewpoints of construct and difficulty. However, almost no studies have examined the effects of question types in relation to test formats. Through two experiments, this study investigated how question types influence the difficulty of these two test formats. The results of Experiment 1 showed that question types affected item difficulty in open-ended tests; more specifically, thematic questions were the most difficult, followed by inference questions, and paraphrase questions were the easiest. In contrast, the result of Experiment 2, in which the same tests were conducted in the multiple-choice test format, revealed that item difficulty did not differ significantly by question type. In addition, we found that predictability of the results of the multiple-choice test was low compared to the open-ended test. Comparison of these two experiments suggested the importance of choice in the multiple-choice test. Close examination of choices indicated that overlap of words in correct choices and the text influenced the item difficulty.