Dr. H. Werner Hess
Hong Kong Baptist University
Dept. of Government and International Studies

If you could follow the previous steps of this workshop, you have already mastered all the basic of Hot Potatoes.

In this part, you will create a text entry exercise. 

For the purpose of this exercise, we use a again the short biography of Vincent van Gogh, published in Russia, at Olga's Gallery. The text (slightly shortened) is already pre-saved for you here. 

Let's assume we want to create a reading comprehension exercise with JQuiz. 

Open JQuiz and insert a title: "Van Gogh's Early Years".

Enter a question next to "Q1":

• In which Dutch city did Vincent van Gogh start his working life?

The answer is straightforward. There is only one possible answer according to the text. Under "Correct Answers" enter

• The Hague

Now enter a question next to "Q2":

• Where was the main office of his first employer?

There is only one possible answer according to the text. One could, however, write the answer in two ways - both of which ahould be entered under "Correct Answers":

• Paris
• in Paris

Now enter a question next to "Q3":

• Why did he leave this company?

According to the text, the answer is straightforward (although not very precise):

• His personal disappointment increased.

Unless you demand strict copying of a phrase from the original text, a student could, however, also enter the following sentences, all of which are correct: 

• He was disappointed.
• His disappointment increased.
• He was personally disappointed.

In fact, there are even more correct answers possible - all of which would have to be anticipated and entered by the exercise author. If not, the program would give an error message - even if the answer were a correct paraphrasing of the original content.  

Consider the following question "Q4":

• What was the dream of his life? What did he want to do?

Again, there are at least four "correct" text entries - not counting possible paraphrases such as "He intended to convert the poor miners to Christianity":

If you have entered all four questions and possible answers, save the file anyway as vangogh6.jqz and vangogh6.htm. 

Try the exercise by yourself or let someone else answer the questions. You will easily see that the sheer variability of possible answers makes this exercise confusing and annoying. Your puzzled students would give it up after 3 or questions ...

Clearly, JQuiz does not work unless the possible correct answers are restricted in number - and that also restricts the feasible length of text entry and the function of the whole exercise. JQuiz does not appear very suitable for reading comprehension - unless students can type in just one unambiguous word (or two) for an answer. It may, however, be more suitable for a grammar (or even spelling) exercise.

Go back to "Q1" in your saved exercise.

Delete the question and instead enter:

• Vincent van Gogh ... born as the son of a Dutch vicar.

Under "Correct Answer" enter

• was

Go to "Q2" and enter:

• Van Gogh ... his career in The Hague.

Under "Correct Answer" enter

• started
• began

Disregard the configuration for a moment. Just save your files again and try the exercise out. It has now become much easier and straightforward - since you now ask for correct grammatical forms (verbs/past tense).

However, you could achieve the same effect with a JCloze exercise.

What then, would be a more appropriate way for a text entry exercise?

You could, for example, enter a sentence with grammatical errors and ask the student to identify the error and retype the entire sentence correctly:

Go back to "Q3" in your saved exercise.

Delete the question and instead enter:

• The Dutch branch office of Goupil & Cie was found by his uncle Vincent.

Under "Correct Answer" enter

• The Dutch branch office of Goupil & Cie was founded by his uncle Vincent.

Go back to "Q4" in your saved exercise.

Delete the question and instead enter:

• But his personal disappointment increas and he leaved Goupil.

Under "Correct Answer" enter

• But his personal disappointment increased and he left Goupil.

Save the exercise and try it out! You will see it works better (although text entry is quite long ...).

There are, of course, many more possibilities to construct quizzes. What you do and how you formulate the task and the questions depends on what you do in the classroom - and the specific focus you intend to give to JQuiz.

• In Q1 and Q2, students are supposed to enter just a correct verb form.
• In Q3 and 4 they should retype and entire sentence - and on the way identify and correct grammatical forms. Without proper instructions, they would not know what to do.

Therefore, you must configure the instructions in the configuration screen.

Since this screen accepts only one instruction for all questions in this exercise, you would have have to separate Q1-2 from Q3-4 into two different exercises.

For this purpose here, we simply delete the entries under Q1 and Q2 in the main  JQuiz screen. In their place you can add other sentences following the model of Q3 and Q4.

Now click on the configuration icon and then on the tab "Titles/Instructions". Under "Instructions", let the students know what they are supposed to do, e.g.

"One or more words in the sentence are incorrect. Please write the entire sentence again and correct the mistake." 

Make sure that all other prompts/feedback messages are to your liking and save the exercise files again.

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