There is a very good reason that you need to know what kind of exam you will be given: You should prepare somewhat differently for essay exams than for multiple-choice exams. In most essay exams, you are expected to be able to state/describe/explain what something IS. The rationale for multiple-choice (and true-false) exams, is that you are also required to be able to recognize what something IS NOT. If all of your preparation has been devoted to rehearsing what things are, you may be thrown off by alternatives on multiple-choice exams that illustrate negatives.
Imagine with me that you are teaching a young child what a dog is. You show pictures of various breeds of dogs, various sizes and colors, and various perspectives. You supplement the pictures with a verbal description about having four legs, a tail, a hairy coat, etc. After doing all that, you wait a few days and then ask the child to tell you what a dog is. The child could probably point to some dog pictures, and give some of the descriptions. But how well does the child know what kinds of animals are not dogs.
To find this out, you present pictures of several animals that look something like a dog: coyote, wolf, dingo, and a dog picture not previously shown. Quite likely, the child will be confused. In order to learn fine discriminations, people have to learn to identify negative instancesī (things that are not) îas well as positive ones. I like to include multiple-choice exams in my courses because they make students learn such discriminations. Students who have not prepared properly will have to learn at the time of the exam but good students have already practiced negatives.
You cannot practice negatives by studying the text or lecture notes. Those are sources of positive information; both writers and teachers concentrate on explaining to you what something is. Rarely do we spend time or space illustrating what something isn't. However, that is a very important part of the learning process and one you need to do for yourself.
The best way to learn negatives is to learn how to write true-false and multiple-choice exams. Then you can prepare for such exams by trying to anticipate the kinds of items the professor might write. But be forewarned: Writing good multiple-choice items is hard mental work. Let me describe how to write multiple-choice items by writing one about such items.
A good multiple-choice item begins as a true statement. Indeed a multiple-choice item is actually a multiple-true-false item except you know one alternative is true and the others are false. In this example, the true statement is, "Multiple-choice exams are difficult because they...require identifying negatives." Now try to think of alternatives that are false, but that are plausible. Some possibilities:
Multiple-choice exams are difficult because they a. require identifying negatives. b. permit guessing c. are ambiguous d. test memory, not comprehension e. involve speed as well as accuracy f. deal with minute details g. can be tricky h. cover more material i. . . .etc.
What I hope you notice is that, as you generate more and more false alternatives, you sharpen your understanding. Thus multiple-choice exams do permit guessing, but that is not what makes them difficult. They may be ambiguous, but any kind of ambiguous exam item is difficult. All exams test memory, and good multiple-choice exams also test comprehension. As you think through why the other alternatives are false, you should get a better grasp of why the critical feature is identifying negatives.
You should also notice that the difficulty of a multiple-choice item depends on how close to being true the false alternatives are. Think back to the child's task of picking out a dog. If, instead of similar animals, I had used a snake, a rabbit, and an elephant as the foils, the child would easily be able to identify the dog. So you see, the difficulty of a multiple-choice exam depends on just how plausible the foils are. Usually, when students malign an item as "tricky," they mean that one of the false alternatives seems to be very nearly true, and it requires a very fine discrimination to identify the correct answer. Usually, that is what the professor intended (like knowing the difference between a dog and a coyote).