Manual

Tests and Pop Quizes

Tests and pop quizzes help you master lexical item usage and also help gauge your overall progress with the language. The difference between them is that tests are generated and saved so that they can be taken over and over while pop quizzes are generated on the fly to be taken once. Since tests are taken more than once the program can track your performance.

To generate a test or a pop quiz first decide what pool of lexical items you want to start from. Select one or more themes from the themes list. The lexical items contained by the themes you select will make up your initial item pool. If you want to further limit your pool of items then select specific ones in the lexical items list. Next, go to the Test menu and select either Generate Test or Pop Quiz. This will open the dialog that will generate the test or pop quiz.

When generating a test then you need to enter a test title at the top of the dialog. When generating a quiz then entering a quiz title is optional. Underneath the title is how many questions you would like to have and how many lexical items you have to choose from. If the desired number of questions is less than the total selected items then items will be randomly chosen when constructing test questions. Conversely, if the desired number of questions is greater than the total selected items then typically this means that the test will have fewer questions than you have specified. This is true in most cases, but ultimately the test type and the configuration determines how many test questions can be generated.

You can expand or contract the pool of lexical items through the Item Selection tab. Here you're able limit your test to certain lexical types, such as nouns or adjectives, include inactive lexical items, or limit questions to items that are within a certain range of difficulty. You can also limit your test to lexical items that were created or modified within a given date range or expand the pool of items to include synonyms, antonyms, phonetically similar items, or related items of those in the initial item pool.

All of the test types have their own list of configurable options on the Test Options (or Quiz Options) tab. At the top of this tab you will see a section labeled General Test Options. These are generic options available for most all test types. The first one defines a timed test. Checking the Timed test checkbox will enabled the seconds per question box. If you want to allow 10 seconds for each question then type 10 in this box, but note that this only defines total test time. It does not limit you to 10 seconds per question. You can spend a whole 30 seconds on an individual question as long as you save 20 seconds somewhere else. For example, a test with 15 questions that allows 10 seconds per question gives you a total of 150 seconds, or 2m 30s, to take the entire test. If time runs out then questions you didn't answer will be counted as wrong.

The following checkbox, labeled Check answers as you go, will do just that. If checked you will be given immediate feedback on whether your answer is correct once you attempt to go to the next question. Otherwise, you will only be told if your answers are correct at the end of the test. If you choose to receive immediate answer feedback then you're also allowed to have multiple attempts at answering the question correctly. For example, if you give yourself 2 attempts and during the course of the test you type an incorrect answer then you will be given 1 more chance to correct your mistake.

The last general test option is to use definitions instead of translations in cases where the item contains a definition. This option is only available for some test types and then is only enabled when definitions are turn on for the lexicon.

Once you've selected the test options that you want, clicking the Generate Test button will generate and save it. If you want to take the test that you just generated go to the Test menu and select Take Test. When the dialog appears, find the test that you just generated, select it, and click ok.

For pop quizzes, there is no Generate Quiz button. Instead, you have the option of taking the quiz right away or, if it's a written quiz, printing it. If you want to take the quiz then click Take Quiz. If you choose to print the quiz then a dialog will prompt you asking if you also want to print the answer key.

Translate »
Scroll to Top