Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 22 Issue 9

© 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue IX Version I 11 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 G The Status and the Specifications of the Questions of an Achievement Exam from the Points of View of the Teaching Staff- Members of Palestine Technical University- Kadoorie (PTUK)\Tulkarm-Campus assessment categories of a given taxonomy." Anees (2017) concludes that "The best ranked university should provide the good questions’ criteria." Anees (2017), further explains that "the young teachers should be trained in preparing high order questions." Köksal & Ulum (2018) indicate that "While providing suitable exam questions at schools, composing the proper ones may be a problematic issue." To sum up, the previous review presented a multi-towered consideration to the specifications of exam questions: it was agreed upon that composing good quality and effective exam questions is not an easy task and careful attention must be paid and exerted; those involved in this process should be trained on the procedure as it is both a skill as well as an art that can be acquired. The previous review stated that composing good quality exams should take into consideration the students' individual differences, and that students normally do not prefer questions that need higher- levels of thinking, and usually they – students - exhibit a tendency of preference towards lower-cognitive questions. As a result, those who are tasked to prepare exam questions should consider a set of maxims: first, questions should not be prepared individually, but ,on the contrary, be prepared as a team product; second, questions should be prepared in accordance with a strict balance between questions that assess high-levels of learning outcomes and those that assess basic-levels of the learning outcomes; third, the process of preparing exam questions should incubate the orientation of developing students various cognitive skills and competences; fourth, the previous review acknowledged that rubrics play a double role as they provide precious feedback about students' comprehension skills in regard to the language and context of a given rubric, in addition to their traditional role of facilitating the process of comprehending the required response from a given question; as a result, incorporating clear and well- structured rubrics yields the optimal outcome of the learning experience; fifth, the stage of preparing exam questions should consider that composing fair and good quality exam questions, which can assess various cognitive levels, is difficult, problematic, demanding and challenging, time- consuming, and absolutely not an easy task. The previous review acknowledged that the best ranked universities provide academics with special training on the skills of preparing and composing exam questions. As stated by the previous review , the process of preparing effective questions should be functioning within the scope of the following banners: first, it is generally believed that short-answer and multiple-choice questions can be most appropriate to assess the lower levels of learning behaviors, but, on the other hand, they are not sufficient to assess higher cognitive levels; second, the quality of the exam question correlates with and, at the same time, reflects the quality of the exam as a whole; third, it should be born that preparing exam questions should be steered towards elevating the exam takers' cognitive skills which will also result in promoting an atmosphere of interaction and some kind of a telling encounter between those exam takers and their teachers; fifth, composing multiple – choice questions is easier than composing comprehension questions, and that an exam with an all multiple-choice format confirms that surface learning is promoted and encouraged; sixth, exam questions should reflect the objectives, goals, outputs and the methodologies that the instructors apply in their teaching; seventh, the language and wording of an exam question should be carefully carried out so as not to alter the cognitive level of the outcome meant to be elicited from the question; eighth, exam questions should not be confined to just one level of assessment of the reference taxonomy, but on the contrary be distributed and balanced to engage students in higher order cognitive processes such as problem-solving and critical thinking; ninth, it is acknowledged that a written exam is the most enhanced method of assessment that is chosen by academic institutions; tenth, the previous review summarized some of the specifications that questions of a given exam should be attributed to: • Multiple-choice questions, which represent the knowledge domain, should not consume a wider or more percentage in comparison with other types of questions that represent other domains of the given taxonomy. • It is essential that the exam questions should cover different cognitive levels to integrate diverse capabilities of learners. • It is necessary to ask high cognitive level questions to enable prospective- student teachers to think in a multifaceted way. • Effectual questions must help to raise issues on which academics need feedback or about which the students need to think. • Effective questions include problem-solving or informational questions. • Efficient exam questions should cover various difficulty levels to refer to the different capabilities of learners. • Questions must not be opaque and ambiguous by nature and must not contain complex syntax, difficult vocabulary, or unintended clues. • Repeating the same questions in various sets of examinations is a very dangerous trend as it gives rise to rote learning, and that the repetition will cause students to memorize the answers to such questions. • Short answers or multiple-choice questions requiring mainly factual recall tend to elicit surface learning, while essays (or long-answer questions) are more likely to encourage deep learning.