Creating a well-structured English question paper requires careful planning and balance. Let’s explore the top 6 things to keep in mind to ensure fairness, clarity, and comprehensive skill assessment.
English is a common language subject in most educational institutions. Depending on the country/ state/ and medium, there can be one to four books to teach the English language at school. This includes grammar, reading, writing, comprehension, storytelling, etc. To create an exam paper for English, you don’t have to spend hours of your time any longer.
Are you frequently tasked with creating or setting question papers? Do you want an effective method to help you create good question papers? If you said yes, you’ve come to the right place. After all, what better than an AI question answer generator tool to assist you?
This blog talks about how to set an English question paper and the top things to keep in mind. And this is all you need to up the quality of your English question paper and improve its effectiveness. So, read in full.
What Should Be Kept in Mind While Setting a Good Question Paper?
To set an English question paper, you need to keep the below points in mind:
1. Relevant Syllabus
The first thing to consider while setting a question paper is the syllabus. You can think of the syllabus as the course material that has been taught to the students. And ideally, your question paper should contain questions only from that course material.
While this may seem too obvious, sometimes, teachers include a few questions to judge the intelligence of their students. However, this can confuse the students or have a negative impact on their performance.
If you want to create question papers for grammar tests, use random statements that don’t come from the English textbook or workbook. However, the topics should strictly be limited to the syllabus. For example, if you haven’t taught tenses in class, you cannot ask questions about it in the exam.
2. Include Different Types of Questions
Including MCQs in your English question paper to test the descriptive skills of your students won’t be effective, right? Therefore, define what you want to test the students for. And accordingly, choose the question type. Here’s how you can decide:
- To check their memory, you can include fill in the blanks.
- To test your students for higher-order learning, you can include multiple-choice questions.
- To check surface-level knowledge, you can include True/False type questions.
- To check their ability to elaborate on a topic, you can include descriptive questions.
Pro Tip: Include all types of questions in your exam question paper to offer variety and to test students for multiple skills. With PrepAI, it is easy to create diverse questions from text.
3. Always Include Important Topics
While creating English questions, make sure to base your questionnaire on important topics. This will help you determine whether or not the students were able to grasp and remember the important information properly. Also, including important topics will help students prepare for the finals. You can quickly create and conduct online exams for each topic to evaluate students’ performance, offer timely feedback, guide them in rectifying mistakes, and improve their results over time.
4. Set A Difficulty Level
Your question paper shouldn’t contain difficult or easy questions only. Instead, there should be a perfect blend of easy and difficult questions. This way, you’ll be able to assess and evaluate both surface level and deeper knowledge of the students. When you set question paper in English, you have the freedom to mix and match different topics and arrive at the difficulty level. Of course, this changes based on your purpose/ intent.
5. Adhere to the Timeline
If you want the students to finish the exam in 2 hours, set the exam accordingly. Decide the number and difficulty of questions in a way that students get ample time to read and write the question paper. Otherwise, your students may not be able to attempt all the questions which can hinder their performance. Include one-word answer questions as well as descriptive questions if you want to cover more topics in the test paper within a short duration.
6. Be Flexible
When setting the question paper, especially while including descriptive questions, be flexible. For instance, if there are five descriptive questions, allow your students to attempt any 4.
Doing this will give more liberty to the students and thus score better. Also, while grading the test, you can ask why the students skipped the question. And if you find that the students weren’t clear about the concept that the question was formed around, you can help them with the same.
Now that you know what to keep in mind while setting an English question paper, it’s time to create an English question paper. While you can follow the tedious method of writing each question by hand, there’s a more effective and intuitive approach to creating question papers online: PrepAI.
PrepAI is AI and ML-based online question paper generator tool. Using this tool, you can create intuitive question papers within minutes. Want to know how? Read along.
How to Set an English Question Paper?
1. Create a PrepAI Account
Visit the PrepAI website and create your free account. As soon as you create your account, you’ll see the PrepAI dashboard like this:
2. Enter the Title and Choose the Source
Once you’re on the dashboard, you need to enter the question paper title and choose the content source.
PrepAI accepts four types of content sources:
- Topic Search: Here, you can enter any topic of your choice, and PrepAI will find the content for you.
- Type or Paste Text: Here, you can paste your custom text in the text box, which PrepAI will use to prepare questions.
- Video: Here, you can upload a video or enter a YouTube video link that PrepAI will use to extract the questions. Provide the start and end timestamps so that only a portion of the video can be used for the test.
- Upload PDF/Word: Here, you can upload a Doc/Docx/PDF file that contains the content.
For this example, you can choose “Topic Search” as the content source.
After that, you can enter any topic of your choice like we have added “The Canterville Ghost”. The moment you enter the topic, you’ll see corresponding content beneath the topic name. This is the content PrepAI will use to generate the questions.
Select the question type and number of questions to include in the test paper. This question generator from text automatically converts the input into an output of your choice. If you want a mix of different question types, use the default option ‘all possible’. Do the same for the question count to get the maximum number of questions for the exam.
3. Generate the Questions, Preview, and Finalize
Now you need to click on the “Generate Questions” button. And within a minute or so, you’ll get a list of questions and answers like in the screenshot below:
There are different types of questions in the “Categories” section. You can simply click on any type, and the corresponding questions and answers will be revealed.
Just below the “Categories” section, there’s an “+ Add Question” button that you can use to add more questions if you want. What’s more, you can edit the generated questions as you please. So, there are lots of customizations available.
Click on the pencil icon at the right corner of each question to edit the text, change the answers, and upload a corresponding image. Delete unwanted questions to clean the test paper. Don’t forget to use the feedback form to train the algorithm. This will help PrepAI understand your requirements and create questions accordingly.
4. Preview and Conduct Test
Once you’re done adding/editing questions, just click the “Preview Question Paper” button, preview the questions, and you’re done. Or, click on Conduct Test and choose from the two options (for self and others). Assign marks to each question and set the date and time limits/ Share the link with the participants via email. You can include a short note/ message as well.
Just download the question paper in PDF/DOCX/EXCEL/JSON, print them and distribute them the same among your students. There’s an option to print the questions with and without the answer key.
Here’s how to set question papers for English tests in a handful of minutes and conduct surprise tests at any time.
Why Use PrepAI for Creating your English Question Paper?
Saves You a Lot of Time
Manually scrolling through the entire book and then writing the questions requires a lot of effort and time. However, PrepAI can help you save this time and effort.
By simply uploading a document, video, or pasting the content, you can generate numerous questions/answers. And all this happens within minutes. Therefore, using PrepAI, you can automate the redundant task of question paper generation and use the saved time for other important tasks.
Built on AI-Powered Algorithm
PrepAI is an online question paper creator built on a powerful NLP (Natural Language Processing) algorithm to accurately convert input data into a required output. By using advanced technology like artificial intelligence, the tool streamlines the process of creating different types of questions from varied input content.
Supported by Bloom’s Taxonomy Framework
The exam generator tool is supported by Bloom’s Taxonomy framework and creates questions to assess the six thinking levels – remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. So, PrepAI is good not only for testing the memory and retaining abilities of students but also for measuring their comprehension and creative thinking skills. This is particularly important in English tests.
Multiple Input and Output Options
When you create question papers online, you need some flexibility in the input and output options. What if the content is available only as a PDF file? What if you cannot copy the text from a website? What if you want to convert a video into a quiz? All these are possible with PrepAI. It accepts input in four types, thus giving you the freedom to generate tests any way you want. Similarly, the final test paper can be downloaded offline as a Word document, Excel sheet, PDF, or JSON file.
Unbiased and Smart Question Generation
It’s quite hard to stay unbiased while writing question papers, right? But PrepAI can help. As PrepAI uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, it knows no bias, which means you can generate high-quality unbiased questions.
What’s more, PrepAI helps you generate smarter and more intuitive questions. Such questions will help develop better thinking among students and will also keep them engaged.
Variety of Questions
Including different types of questions such as MCQs, Fill in the blanks, True/False, and Descriptive ones can be a hassle.
However, with PrepAI, it’s a piece of cake. You just need to select the content source and click generate, and you’re done. The tool will generate questions/answers of all types within seconds. Now, how can you beat that?
Conduct Tests Online and Offline
With the PrepAI question answer generator, you have the choice to conduct the English test online or offline. Share the link via email for online tests. Students simply have to click on the link, provide the required input information (for ID), and submit the answers. They can get the results instantly after the test. You can download the questions offline and convert them into an oral quiz or ask students to write the answers on paper and grade them manually. Moreover, you can set the date and time limit for them to submit the answers. This will prevent delays and give them time to participate in the exam at their own pace.
Personalize and Edit Questions
Personalization is a key factor in today’s world. It’s not just about how to create a question paper for English tests. You need enough control over the process and the final test paper. PrepAI gives you this through its edit option. Add more questions manually, delete existing questions, change the question statements and answers, and upload images to enhance the exam paper and align it with your requirements.
Data Insights and History
As a teacher/ educator, you will have to track students’ performances, check whether everyone has submitted the answers, and evaluate their progress. This is simplified by PrepAI. By clicking on My Question Papers, you can access the previous tests generated by the tool. Here, click on the details of the English test to see the insights about the participants and their performance.
FAQs
Q. Which app or online tool is best for making question papers?
A. While there are numerous test paper generator tools you can find on the internet, PrepAI is loved by all. Here’s why:
- Completely Free: Unlike other tools, PrepAI charges no money for question generation. You can generate quizzes and question papers for whatever subjects you want for free.
- Easy to Use: You can simply create an account, enter the information and generate question papers. Yes, it’s that easy.
- Customizable: You can edit or add questions according to your liking. This way, you can customize any question you want.
Q. What are the qualities of a good question paper?
A. A good question paper usually has the following qualities/characteristics:
- Must include different types of questions like MCQs, fill in the blanks, true/false, descriptive, etc.
- Must contain clear and concise questions.
- Must be unbiased and should serve the purpose (to be able to test the students).
- Must be around the topics taught.
- Must be of adequate length, i.e., neither too short nor too lengthy.
Q. How to grade a question paper?
A. While setting/creating an exam is important, grading holds even more importance. After all, grading is what decides whether the students grasped the lesson or not, right? So, to make your grading process more effective, you can follow these best practices for grading an exam.
- Create a Grading Guide or Rubric
- Provide Feedback That’s Actionable
- Let Your Students Know About the Grading Procedure
- Grade One Question at a Time and Not One Student
- Grade Papers in a Peaceful Environment and Take Frequent Breaks
Key Takeaways
Setting an effective question paper is important. And you can do that by keeping these things in:
- Set A Difficulty Level
- Relevant Syllabus
- Include Different Types of Questions
- Always Include Important Topics
- Adhere to the Timeline
- Be Flexible
To make the question paper writing process easy, use PrepAI, which is an AI and ML-based question paper generation tool. This tool can help you save money, time, and effort. Also, you can create a better and smarter question paper using PrepAI.
