Short answer questions in exams (2024)

FAQs

What are the benefits of short answer questions? ›

Gives opportunities for students to show higher level skills and knowledge. Allows students to elaborate on responses in a limited way. Provides an opportunity to assess a student's writing ability. Can be less time consuming to prepare than other item types.

But, there are also challenges with short answer and essay questions. They take a lot of time, for instructors and students, and they can be difficult to grade fairly and consistently. It can also be difficult to separate a student's writing ability from their understanding of the material.

30-90 seconds for an introductory question (“Why do you want to work here?” or “Tell me about yourself.”) 3 minutes for a behavioral question (“Give me an example of a risk you took”).

Integrate content from lectures with notes from the text or readings as you create your study notes. Study actively - explain concepts out loud, teach them to a friend, or use concept mapping to organize your thoughts and show how concepts are related or differentiated.

Short Answer questions can be difficult for students. While not as lengthy as an essay question, you are still expected to cover enough material in the question to get full marks.

Short Answer Questions can be used as part of a formative and summative assessment, as the structure of short answer questions are very similar to examination questions, students are more familiar with the practice and feel less anxious. Unlike MCQs, there is no guessing on answers, students must supply an answer.

With MCQS, there is often a focus on correct answers, rather than critical thinking skills. With SAQS, being concise is key and there is often a specific number of ideas or facts that you need to mention in order to get full marks in a question.

What are short answers? Short answers are how we reply to yes/no questions and statements in English. Short answers are more polite than a simple yes or no. Form affirmative short answers with yes + subject + auxiliary verb; form negative short answers with no + subject + negated auxiliary verb.

There are two types of short-answer items: question and completion. One format presents a question that students answer in a few words or phrases. With the other format, completion or fill in the blank, students are given an incomplete sentence that they complete by inserting a word or words in the blank space.

Why do we use short answers? ›

To avoid repetition in conversations, we often use short answers. "Are you John?" "Yes, I am [John]."

A short-answer question is worth the same number of points as the multiple-choice questions. For example, say an assignment has 4 assessment questions (3 multiple-choice and 1 short-answer question). In this case, each question is worth 25 percentage points.

A key difference between an essay and a shorter response is length; this means you must be very concise and focused. Although there is no set rule about paragraph and shorter answer length, usually paragraphs are between 4 to 8 sentences, or 90 to 200 words, long.

Short answers are brief but complete—they can answer "yes or no" questions or more complicated queries. Conventionally, the verb in a short answer is in the same tense as the verb in the question asked.

Short answers are worth the same percentage as multiple choice questions. So, if there are 4 questions, each question is worth 25%. If there are 5 questions, each is worth 20%. Short answer questions and multi-select multiple choice questions can have partial scores.

A typical 'short answer' pattern is subject + auxiliary verb, together with whatever other words are really necessary. Can he swim? Yes, he can. "This response is more natural than Yes, he can swim.