The use of multiple-choice tests in teaching a foreign language: minimizing guessing effects

The article discusses the features of using multiple-choice tests. With the growing digitalization of education, in addition to traditional methods of knowledge assessment in teaching foreign languages, tests are becoming increasingly important, especially for monitoring current academic performance. For this purpose, multiple-choice tests are most often used. Having undeniable advantages, this type of tests has a number of disadvantages, among which the authors highlight the problem of guessing the correct answer when performing the test. It is noted that the existing formulas of correction for guessing are quite complex and therefore not always suitable for instant assessment during the current control in the classroom. In addition, most of the considered methods of correcting the test result, taking into account the possible guessing of the correct answer, proceed from the assumption that all test takers always try to compensate for the lack of knowledge by guessing to one degree or another. The purpose of this study was to offer an accessible method for identifying attempts to guess the correct answer in a multiple-choice test with one solution by students of non-linguistic faculties of universities studying English as a foreign language. The method should allow teachers to identify the attempts of test takers to guess the correct answer and make appropriate adjustments to the final result without complex mathematical processing. The method is based on the analysis of the test takers' answers when the questions are repeated twice. The additional information obtained in this case made it possible to reduce the calculations for determining the proportion of guessed answers to a single formula and simplify the methodology as a whole. The article describes an experiment on the application of the developed method in testing.