When creating a grammar exam it is important to consider the type of questions you will ask. Many teachers employ a variety of techniques and questions to appeal to each type of learner. The most popular types of grammar questions are jumbled sentences, multiple choice questions, gap fills, and simple paragraphs. A variety of questions can be used to exploit the grammar points you want to test and also to challenge the learner to think of language in different ways.
A jumbled sentence is just a sentence that the learners have to put in the right order. For example:
I / never / Scotland / been / have / to
They have all of the components of the sentence, but they must arrange the words to make sense. Jumbled sentences are a good way to test grammar points like adverbs of frequency or the perfect tenses. In those instances, the actual word order is vital to understanding how to use the grammar. This example is testing the present perfect. The students have to know where to put the auxiliary verb and where to put the past participle to get the question right.
Multiple choice questions, or MCQs, are an easy way to check vocabulary, but they can also be used to test grammar. For example:
I’m planning ___ my sister next weekend.
a. visiting b. will visit c. to visit
The students must know the meaning and the appropriate grammar to complete the sentence. This is also a good way to take advantage of lexical sets that the students have learned throughout the course. Apart from tenses, MCQs can be used to test articles and prepositions.
Gap-fills and paragraphs are the most versatile type of test question. You can either provide the words in brackets or all together in a box above the question and let the student choose the right form and placement or just provide the gaps and let the student choose the word, form, and placement. For example:
My wife’s name is Laura and she ______________ (come) from Sicily.
It is easy to choose a lexical set or a group of tenses and make an exercise out of them. This type of question is the most challenging for the student, but it is also the easiest for them to study. They have more clues to guide them in the paragraph or sentence and they are familiar with this form from class exercises. For lower levels it is helpful to limit the tenses that you use and clearly state what you are looking for in the directions to the exercise.
A grammar exam should have a variety of exercises to make learners examine language from other perspectives. The specific grammar points that you are testing will also lend themselves to different kinds of questions. It is easy to appeal to all kinds of learners with an array of question types.