2018 Volume 14 Issue 1 Pages 51-70
This study examines the processes of thinking about and solving multiple-choice problems using the think-aloud method. We asked 18 high school students to solve two problems in the subject of Japanese Language, which were set in past tests of the National Center for University Entrance Examination. There, we found three features of the process of thinking about and solving multiple-choice problems. First, the results suggest that students did not read the entire sentences from start to finish and then solve the questions. Instead 89% of them read the parts of the sentences which they needed in order to solve the problem. Secondly, the students solved the problems mostly through a process of elimination. They solved half of the problem items based on a conceptual understanding of the sentences. Finally, we analyzed whether those problem-solving processes and strategies correlated to the percentage of correct answers. The results suggested that students who used a strategy based on a conceptual understanding of the sentences often chose the correct answers , but even those students did not connect the results of solving problems to make a coherent understanding of the whole . We discussed the possible negative effect of the problem structure and the act of choosing from multiple-choices. This seems to lead students to fragmented reading of the problem sentences.
