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Re: test example



On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 7:06 PM, Pierre Abbat<phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
> On Wednesday 02 September 2009 11:07:46 Jorge Llambías wrote:
>> "lo _cipnrkuku_ cu _punji_ le ri _sodva_ le zdani be lo _drata_ cipni"
>>
>> A. cipnrkuku
>> B. punji
>> C. sodva
>> D. drata
>> E. _no se srera_ (written for example in some other font)
>>
>> (Very tricky question. It took me a while to realize that the answer
>> wasn't in fact E. If there wasn't a "no se srera" option it would have
>> been easier. Not sure if we really want to include this kind of
>> thing.)
>
> I think we should. People confuse words in natlangs too, and there are
> questions on proficiency tests for there/they're/their and lay/lie (the past
> of one verb is homophonous with the present of the other).

I wouldn't have a problem with a question that asked you to choose
between "sovda" and "sodva" in order to test whether you know which is
which. My problem is that if only one of them appears in the test, and
the context clearly dictates which one is meant, a fluent speaker
might not even notice the misspelling. I didn't notice it the first
four or five times I read the question, and I would have got that
question wrong, even though I don't confuse those words when producing
them myself because I know "sovda" contains the "ov" sequence and
"sodva" contains "sod".

> I thought of another one. A sentence I made up for illustrating "be'o" is "ti
> zbasu be lo takybli bei lo kliti be'o minji". Remove "be'o" and it's still
> grammatical, but silly: "This makes bricks out of clay machines." As a test
> question:
>
> ti<u> </u>zbasu <u>be</u> lo takybli <u>bei</u> lo kliti<u> </u>minji
> A. <u> </u>
> B. <u>be</u>
> C. <u>bei</u>
> D. <u> </u>
> E. <i>no se srera</i>
>
> Is that a good way of indicating a missing word?

Yes, but I'm not sure we can say that "being silly" necessarily counts
as an error. I would prefer for grammar questions not to depend on
making sense, or else make it very clear in the instructions that we
are expecting the answer that makes the most sense semantically as
well as being grammatical.

mu'o mi'e xorxes