Effectiveness of immediate vs. delayed recall in detecting invalid performance in coached and uncoached simulators: Results of two experimental studies

Objective: Two experimental studies were conducted to compare the ability of immediate and delayed recall indicators to discriminate between performances of simulators and full-effort clinical and nonclinical participants. Methods: Three groups of simulators (uncoached, symptom-coached, and testcoached), one group of community controls, and one group of cognitively impaired patients were assessed with four experimental memory tests, in which the immediate and delayed recall tasks were separated by three other tasks. Results: Across both studies, delayed recall demonstrated higher accuracy than immediate recall in classifying simulated performances as invalid, as compared to performances of bona fide clinical participants. ROC curve results showed sensitivities below 50% for both indicators at specificities of ≥ 90%. Computing performance curves across recall trials revealed descending trends for all three simulator groups indicating a suppressed learning effect as a marker of noncredible performances. Among types of coaching, test-coaching proved to decrease differences between simulators and patients. Discussion: The effectiveness of such indicators in clinical evaluations and their vulnerability to information about test-taking strategies are discussed.

Teaching and learning process of test-taking strategies in answering reading comprehension section

The study was aimed at finding the difficulties faced by test takers in Reading Comprehension section of TOEFL and describing the teaching and learning process of test-taking strategies of Reading Comprehension section of TOEFL. This study used qualitative research design. To collect the data, the researchers used document analysis and observation as the instrument of the study. The subjects of this study were the students or test takers and a teacher or tutor in TOEFL preparation class. The study showed the range of difficulty faced by students or test takers are skill 6 (57.14%), skill 8 (50%), skill 7, 9, 10, and 11 (33.3%), skill 3 (31%), skill 4 and 12 (16.7%), skill 1 (8.3%), and skill 5 (0%). In teaching and learning strategies, the Planning Strategy was applied in skills 1, 3, 9, 6, 7, 4, 5, and 8. Monitoring Strategies was applied in in skills 1, 3, 9, 6, and 4. Comprehending strategy was used in skills 1, 3, 6, 7, 4, 10, and 11. Retrieval Strategy was applied in skills 9, 5, and 8. Socioaffective strategy was applied in skill 9. Test-wiseness strategy was applied in skills 1, 3, and 9. Based on findings, the researchers found that there is still high percentage of difficult skills faced by students or test takers and more than one strategies were applied in almost every skill of the Reading Comprehension Section of TOEFL.

IELTS READING TEST-TAKING STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY HIGH SCORE CANDIDATES IN ACADEMIC TRAINING MODULE

Nghiên cứu này nhằm mục đích làm sáng tỏ những chiến thuật đọc thường được áp dụng bởi những thí sinh đạt điểm cao kỹ năng đọc trong bài thi IELTS học thuật. Hai câu hỏi nghiên cứu gồm: (1) Các thí sinh Việt Nam thường sử dụng chiến lược làm bài nào trong các bài thi đọc IELTS? (2) Các chiến lược làm bài thi đó có liên quan như thế nào đến thành tích của thí sinh? Nghiên cứu sử dụng phương pháp khảo sát đối với 100 người tham gia và phỏng vấn 06 người học tiếng Anh đã tham gia kỳ thi IELTS và đạt ít nhất 7.0 cho kỹ năng đọc; từ đó, chỉ ra các chiến lược đọc phổ biến được sử dụng bởi những thí sinh đạt điểm cao và ảnh hưởng của những chiến lược này tới kết quả của thí sinh. Các phát hiện từ nghiên cứu minh họa sự đa dạng trong việc áp dụng các chiến lược làm bài thi đọc IELTS và tác động của các chiến lược đến kết quả bài thi. Các phát hiện cũng khuyến khích người học tìm hiểu và trau dồi phương pháp tiếp cận cơ bản khi làm bài thi đọc, đặc biệt là trong bài thi đọc IELTS, nhằm nâng cao mức độ thành thạo đối với kỹ năng đọc hiểu của bản thân.

Should students change their answers on multiple choice questions?

Multiple choice exams are ubiquitous, but advice on test-taking strategies varies and is not always well informed by research. This study evaluated the question of whether students benefit or are harmed when they change their initial answers on multiple choice questions in the context of physiology and biology courses. Previously marked examinations were reviewed for eraser marks that indicated answer changes, and the impact of these changes on exam grades was tabulated. In addition, faculty and students were surveyed for their opinions about changing answers. A plurality of faculty (36%) reported a belief that answer changes usually harm student grades, whereas a slim majority of students (51%) believed that answer changing helped their scores (χ2 = 60.52, P < 0.0001). Empirically, across two exams, students changed their answer from an incorrect answer to a correct one 2.8 times (SD 2.2) compared with 1.0 time (SD 1.4) changing in the negative direction. Therefore, on average, students benefited ( V = 123.5, P < 0.0001) from answer changing. Furthermore, comparing across two exams in the same course, some students were consistently more likely to change their answers than others (adjusted R2= 0.23, P < 0.0001), but the impact of changing answers on the first exam provided no prediction of how much a student would benefit from answer changing on the second exam (adjusted R2= −0.004, P = 0.42). These data support the argument that students should be advised to review and revise responses to exam questions before submitting them.