I work for an educational testing company, and at the moment I’m working on a reading project, which isn’t my normal content area. Basically kids are told to read something then answer questions about it.
In reading we’re given a rubric to tell you how to score items, and they provide “scoring notes” to let you know acceptable responses and common trends - the notes don’t delineate which of the two they are, however. (oh, and the kids never see this stuff)
We had a note about a question similar to (but not exactly because of nondisclosure) “careers discussed in the reading passage”. Students had to identify three specific things and gives supporting details.
Scoring notes:
Instructor (students may not use this term) - instructors teach children blah blah .
Taxi Driver - a person paid to bring people from one location to another
blah blah blah
How do you interpret the word “may” in the scoring note?
Apparently they were trying to indicate that the child might use the word “teacher” or some other word instead. 1/2 of us - mostly those of us who have only been doing reading for 3 days- thought that they weren’t going to be given credit for using the term Instructor! I’m really glad we asked why the term was taboo to dispell that belief.
The developer of the question is going to be alerted to the confusion the wording caused, but I’m curious as to which way other people who weren’t familiar with the scoring notes would have interpreted it.
I agree that it is ambiguous. If they wanted to explain how students could use alternate phrasing, they should have said as much in the initial instructions, not down by the first answer. As it stands, the phrasing implies that students cannot use the phrase “Instructor.”
Frankly, I’m frightened that I can see this flaw and they couldn’t. I’ve spent the last 4 years studying farming, not English.
The good thing is this is just a trial run of these items, so there’s time to tweak both the items themselves and how they’re scored before they’re part of a real test. This is kind of the point of doing it - smoothing out the rough edges before it counts.
Another vote for “Instructor” being forbidden. I can see what was intended, but I think maybe the phrase should have been more like “students might use teacher or a similar word instead”.
Agree with Otto and Shamrock. “may not” is so thoroughly ambiguous that it should probably be replaced with “might not” or “must not,” as the case may be, in most contexts where it might be confused.
I definitely read it as ‘not permitted’, and puzzled over what other meaning there could possibly be before giving up and reading the hint box. :smack:
It didn’t occur to me until we asked, so don’t hit yourself too hard. We’ve suggested that it be changed to “might” or “may or may not” or maybe “students may use ___ instead.” Fortunately, even if the DOE doesn’t think it’s an issue, the people who’ll train this question when it’s part of an actual test will know to explain it since there’s a record of the confusion it caused.
I am glad that a lot of others thought it read funny too, though. It’s nice to know we weren’t alone
I initially read it as forbidding the use of “instructor”, but since that made no sense, I went back and looked for ambiguity and came to the right conclusion.
