How to Write Questions That Actually Test Recall

Most self-written questions are too easy, and the reason is not that the writer is soft on themselves. It is that questions written while looking at the answer inherit cues from it. The wording points at the answer, so recognising the wording feels like knowing the content.

The Quiz Generator holds the questions; the quality has to come from how you write them. This article covers the specific traps.

The cue problem

Write “What is the powerhouse of the cell?” and the answer arrives from the phrasing, not from knowledge of the cell. The question has become a slogan. This happens whenever the question and answer are learned together as a pair.

The test is whether you could answer a differently worded version. If “which organelle produces most ATP” is much harder than the familiar phrasing, you have learned the phrase, not the fact. Write the question in wording you have not seen, and the gap appears.

Question shapes that work

• Ask for a comparison: how does X differ from Y, and why does the difference matter.
• Ask for a consequence: if X were removed, what would change.
• Ask for a reason: why is this the case rather than the obvious alternative.
• Ask for a definition in your own words, with a banned word, which stops you reciting the textbook phrasing.

Each of these requires more than recognition. They are slower to answer, so fewer are needed: ten good questions beat forty slogan-style ones.

Avoid one-word answers when the exam wants prose

If the exam asks for an explanation, a question answerable with one word trains the wrong skill. Ask “explain why” instead of “what is”, even when the underlying knowledge is the same, because the answer you produce is what you will practice producing.

The opposite also holds. A question that demands an essay to test a single date wastes time. Match the demand of the question to the demand of the exam.

Checking your own questions

1. Write the questions with the notes covered, from memory of the topic, then check against the notes.
2. Read each question aloud and ask whether the answer is implied by the wording.
3. Ask someone else to answer two of them. If they can answer from general knowledge without the topic, the question is too easy.
4. Keep a note of which questions you got wrong twice. Those are the ones worth rewriting.

Questions you cannot answer at all

Some questions are unanswerable because they are badly written, and it is worth telling the difference from a gap in knowledge. If the answer is not in your notes and not derivable from them, the question is wrong, not you. Delete it rather than carrying a permanent failure in the set.

For the wider method, see How to Turn Your Notes into a Quiz You Can Mark. For why testing works better than rereading, see Why Self-Testing Beats Rereading Your Notes.

Put the questions into Quiz Generator only after you have written them without the notes in front of you.