EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 8, page 177

Read this paragraph (presented by ref), and then answer the questions at the end of the paragraph.
(Pretend that you’re taking a test and that your grade depends on getting the answers right.)

For most of the 20th century, the teaching and learning of restike has never aroused the same degree of
interest within language teaching as have such issues as satical competence, tound analysis, and halish
skills. Restike instruction has often been relegated to secondary status because restike acquisition was not
considered a beal. Basically, restike instruction was seen as a means to improve other skills, especially
halish skills.

Questions:

1. What hasn’t aroused much interest for most of the 20th century?


2. What issues in language teaching have aroused a lot of interest this century?


3. Why was restike instruction relegated to secondary status?


4. What was the relationship between restike acquisition and halish skills for most of this century?

Because nonsense words were used in the paragraph, understanding the paragraph is impossible. Yet I’ll
bet that you could come up with plausible-sounding answers to most of the questions. Clearly, these
questions are very poor at assessing understanding.
In class, you will see other examples of questions that are poor at assessing understanding. The
purpose of this chapter is to help you develop skills at asking questions that will successfully assess (and
promote) understanding.

In order to assess understanding, you must ask novel questions that require new inferences. Here are
some guidelines.

1. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy in Table 8.5 as a guide to asking questions at higher levels. Benjamin
   Bloom and his colleagues have developed a taxonomy of learning objectives that was intended to guide
   instruction. There were six categories of objectives in the cognitive domain.

A. Knowledge of such items as facts, terms, classifications, theories. Students are able to recall
these items. These objectives could conceivably be achieved using rote memory.
B. Comprehension. Students show that they comprehend ideas, as indicated by their ability to
communicate ideas in their own words.
C. Application. Students show that they can apply ideas, as by solving problems or applying
ideas to concrete situations.
D. Analysis. Students separate ideas into their component parts. For instance, students might
break a process into component steps, or students might analyze the role of different parts that make up a
whole.
E. Synthesis. Students integrate new ideas with prior ideas, or students put two sets of ideas
together.
F. Evaluation. Students evaluate the quality or ethics of something.

A very useful application of this taxonomy is to help you think of useful questions you could ask
students. Here are some examples for several different topics:

Table 8.5: Bloom's Taxonomy
Category Ed Psych: Responses to
Anomalous Data

Literature:

Romeo and Juliet

Mathematics:

Adding fractions

Knowledge List the 8 responses to
anomalous data.

Name the main characters

of Romeo and Juliet.

Give the definition of a

numerator.