What Makes Distractors Plausible in Multiple-Choice Reading Tests?

Ushiro, Yuji; Morimoto, Yuko; Hijikata, Yuko; Nakagawa, Chikako; Watanabe, Fuyumi; Kai, Akari; Shimizu, Haruka; Koga, Tsutomu; Ohno, Masumi; Umehara, Chika; Hamano, Yukiko; Narumi, Tomo; Tao, Naoko; Shimada, Sae; Kiyama, Miho; Suzuki, Ryuichi; Kurisu, Yu; Gomi, Natsuko

doi:10.20622/jltaj.10.0_56

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Previous studies have investigated the characteristics of distractors in reading comprehension items (e.g., Drum et al, 1981;Freedle & Kostin, 1991King et al, 2004;Lin et al, 2010;Ushiro et al, 2007). For example, the larger number of new content words in distractors could be easily falsified, leading to high p-values (easier) because test takers considered those words as not included in the text (Drum et al, 1981).…”

Section: Distractors In Reading Itemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Distractors with negation and/or lengthy distractors make an item difficult (Freedle & Kostin, 1993). Furthermore, Ushiro et al (2007) investigated the distractor characteristics of reading items for L2 learners and found that distractors with text keywords and those containing more information were selected frequently by test takers.…”

Section: Distractors In Reading Itemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Comparison of Distractor Selection Among Proficiency Levels in Reading Tests: A Focus on Summarization Processes in Japanese EFL Learners

Terao

Ishii

2020

Sage Open

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This study aimed to compare selection patterns of distractors (incorrect options) according to test taker proficiency regarding Japanese students’ summarization skills of an English paragraph. Participants included 414 undergraduate students, and the test comprised three summarization process types—deletion, generalization, and integration. Within the questions, which represented summary candidates for a final version of a test, distractors were created reflecting typical student errors related to each summarization process. Six distractor types were tested. Results showed that distractors that were missing important information for the summary functioned well for determining low-, middle-, and high-proficiency students regarding deletion items. For generalization items, both distractor types, those containing examples and those with inappropriate superordinates, were attractive for low- and middle-proficiency students. Regarding integration items, it was found that distractors missing the author’s viewpoint in the summary were more attractive only for less-proficient students. Several tips to guide future item writing are provided.

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