Multiple Choice Question

Tips and Tricks for Multiple Choice Question

• Read the questions before you read the options
• The answers will be in the same order as the text
• Eliminating the 50% of the option should not be hard and for the rest 50% use qualifiers and distractors to match the answerE.g. Everyone who ate the prawn sandwiches at the party was ill. Most people who ate the prawn sandwiches at the party were ill.
• The skills that you use in MCQ are skimming scanning and reading for details.
• If you know nothing about the topic, don’t panic. It is a reading test, not a test of your knowledge.
• Before deciding on your answer, always go back and carefully read the questions before making your final decision.
• You might be asked about both facts and opinions. Facts are things that are always true or cannot be disproved but opinions are just what people think.
• In case, you don’t find the answer just make an educated guess. You don’t lose score for your wrong answer.

What is Multiple-Choice Question?

After a quick run through Tips and Tricks for Multiple Choice Question let’s understand what it is.  Multiple-choice question always contains two parts: a stem (Question) and a set of alternatives (Multiple Choice) which has the best answer to the question, and a number of distracters that are plausible but incorrect answers to the question.

Types of multiple-choice questions asked in IELTS are:-

• Standard Multiple Choice
• Modified Multiple Choice

Standard Multiple Choice questions

Standard Multiple Choice questions are the most asked form of Multiple Choice questions in the IELTS test with one question and four possible answers. Unlike your academic MCQ (school+college), IELTS don’t have options like none of the above and all of the above.

Example – Standard Multiple Choice questions

Look at the question below which is to show what a standard mutiple choice question looks like.

Choose the correct letter A, B, C, or D.   4 Which description best describes Esperanto? A a language which is similar to Chinese B an old Latin language C a language which was created as an international language D a language which is used for radio broadcasts

Modified Multiple Choice

Many teachers prefer teaching this as a separate question type. These questions are a little different to the Standard Multiple Choice questions we have just looked at. They are asked only occasionally.

Modified Multiple Choice questions: Two answers for one question

This type of Modified Multiple Choice question asks you to choose TWO answers for ONE question. Look at the example question and answer below.

Question 6Choose TWO letters A – F.   6 Which TWO countries mentioned in the passage use Esperanto? A Poland B Japan C Israel D Germany E England F Brazil

Tips:-

If one of the answers you choose is correct, but the other is incorrect (for example, B and D), the answer will be marked incorrect.

Modified Multiple Choice questions: Type 1

This type of Modified Multiple Choice question asks you to choose TWO answers (e.g., Question 7 and 8) for ONE question. Look at the example below:-

Question 7-8Choose TWO letters A – F.   Which TWO countries mentioned in the passage use Esperanto? A Poland B Japan C Israel D Germany E England F Brazil

To get this answer correct, you must write one letter in the space for Question 7 on your Answer Sheet and the other letter in the space for Question 8. It doesn’t matter what order you write the two letters.

Tips and Tricks for Multiple Choice Question

The Process

To understand the process let’s take a passage and a question.

Choose the correct letter A, B, C, or D.   1 Cultivating crops is an example of A economic growth B stooped labour C a typical job D factory work

A Migrant workers, those workers who move repeatedly in search of economic opportunity, typically perform society’s temporary jobs. The migrant’s low paid work includes ‘stooped labour’ like cultivating crops, menial services such as cleaning public restrooms, ‘sweatshop’ work such as making apparel, and assembly line factory work like putting together computer parts. Migrant workers are often pivotal for economic growth.

B Until the twentieth century most migrant labour was internal. For example, generations of former slaves from the southern parts of the United States annually followed the crops north. Recently, however, most migrant labour in Europe and America has been external – that is, workers from other countries.

Step 1 Read the question and all the options (A, B, C, D) and underline the key words of both.

1 Cultivating crops is an example of   A economic growth B stooped labours C a typical job D factory work

Step 2 Scan the paragraphs to find the keywords or  synonyms from the stem

A Migrant workers, those workers who move repeatedly in search of economic opportunity, typically perform society’s temporary jobs. The migrant’s low paid work includes ‘ stooped labour’ like cultivating crops, menial services such as cleaning public restrooms, ‘sweatshop’ work such as making apparel, and assembly line factory work like putting together computer parts. Migrant workers are often pivotal for economic growth.   Like = Example

Step 3 Read intensively the area of the paragraph with key words to find a matching keyword from options.

The migrant’s low paid work includes ‘stooped labour’ like cultivating crops, menial services such as cleaning public restrooms, ‘sweatshop’ work such as making apparel, and assembly line factory work like putting together computer parts.   Passage says: ‘The migrant’s low paid work includes stooped labour like cultivating crops.‘. Hence answer= B