Guideline for constructuing a

MCQ
By :
Azurin Abdul Rahman
Muhammad Fu’ad Jahaya
 Decide the
number of
Every item has
options for each
item only 1 correct
Do not answer
trivial
questions Test the items ,
after you have
written all the
items.
Use 2 texts
instead of 1

MCQ
Test the
remaining
skills.

Check what
skills(s) the items
you have marked Work out
out can test
Choose detailed
specification
a text
 Workout detailed specifications
• Regarding what you need to test , how many
items you proposed to have, before you start
thinking of your MCQ items.
 Choose a text
• That you feel will enable you to fulfill the test
requirement.
• Mark out the parts of the text that may
possibly be the focus of a questions.
• Count to see if you have enough items
Check what skills the items you have marked
out can test
• If you do not have enough items, check what
skill the items you have marked out can test.
• Check against the specification to see what
target skills have been left out.
 Test the remaining skills
• Look once again at the text to see if you can find
something that can used to test the remaining skills. Here
are some possibilities that you can look into :
– If you text is an excerpt, could you use the text before or the text
after the excerpt(selection) you picked out?
– Most teachers only look at the content of a reading text in
looking for possible areas to test.There are very important
aspects of comprehension that relate to a candidate’s ability to
seethe relationship between ideas in the text.
– Look also at the possibility of asking questions about things not
in the text but which require the student to use information in
the text.
 Use 2 texts instead of 1
• Another opinion when you cannot get enough
items for 1 text , is perhaps to use 2 texts
instead of 1.
• If you decide to do this, make sure that the 2
texts together make up the size indicated in
the table of specifications.
Do not ask unimportant(trivial) questions

• Do not ask trivial questions, just to make up

the number of items you need.
• A very important skill in reading is to
distinguish important points from
unimportant ones.
• By asking questions about unimportant issues,
you may prevent your students from acquring
this skill.
 Number of option for each item
• Decide on number of option for each item.
• Usually 4 are given but if you cannot find 4 good
distracters for all your items, it may be better to
settle for 3 options.
• Do not used ‘All of the above’ or ‘ None of the
above’ as your last option unless they are the
correct answers in at least 1 or2 questions.
• Otherwise, the candidate will begin to realise
that you always use them as dummies.
 Test it
• After you have written all your items, test to
see if any of your questions can be answered
without reading.
 1 correct answer
• Make sure every item has only 1 correct
answer.
 Refference.
• ELT methodology , principle and practice