wrote in message
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Bob Brock wrote:
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Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote in
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Want to see a summary of the old study guides, and some sample
questions? I'll post them if you are interested.
Always am.
Here's a sample - lots more to come.
From the 1976 ARRL License Manual:
Study Question #31:
Well, I can see why those types of questions are no longer being used.
It's
more about who is giving the tests than it is about who is taking it.
Every tried grading essay questions?
Yes - but you missed the point, Bob.
In 1976 the tests were all multiple-choice, same as today, except that
most of them were 5 choices rather than 4.
But the FCC-provided *study guides* were in essay format, as given
above. The exact Q&A were not publicly available - at least not
officially.
73 de Jim, N2EY
Yeah, but then there were all those "unofficial" question pools. The same
thing is done with the "General Contractors" exam here. For a fee, you can
know what questions are on the various exams and hence have a study guide.
Whether it's sanctioned or not, it would still happen. I'll bet that the
truth be told, there were some underground copies of test questions
available even back then. You know, if everyone in the club came back an
just wrote down the questions that they remember, it wouldn't take long to
cover over 90 percent of the pool of questions.
Giving the study guides in essay format and then testing multiple choice
gives the test writer a lot of leeway in how the questions are worded. Some
people get off on writing questions so that the test is not so much on your
knowledge of the subject as it is about your ability to read carefully. The
reason that it worked back then was because the tests were administered by
the FCC and had a lot more oversight than todays test administrators do.
The only real soulution would be to provide an accepted pool of test
questions that would be approved to be on the tests. However, then we come
back to how those test pools would be available for a price after a while.
Now, a better question would be, if the current test procedure produce
operators capable of functioning at the minimum entry level for that
particular classification of ham, why would we feel compelled to change it?
Bear in mind, I'm not opposed to proposing a change to the testing method
provided there is a tangable benefit to it beyond simply making it harder to
get a ticket.