Split Thread The ability to read and follow exam/test instructions

[The Man]

Thread split from here where the posts were off-topic.

Posted By: Agatha

I think a lot of people just don't bother to read the directions very carefully and some people just don't read very well.

I remember a test is high school, all kinds of questions and directions. The first direction was to read all directions before starting the test. The last direction was that the only thing you needed to do to complete the test was to write your name on it. Can't tell you how many people just started answering question and trying to follow the directions for each question. Instead of following the first direction which was to read all directions first.

ETA:

Decades of doing the Publishers Clearing House contest entry jigsaw directions has trained me well.

 

[Modified]

I remember a test is high school, all kinds of questions and directions. The first direction was to read all directions before starting the test. The last direction was that the only thing you needed to do to complete the test was to write your name on it. Can't tell you how many people just started answering question and trying to follow the directions for each question. Instead of following the first direction which was to read all directions first.

The people who just wrote their names failed the test of understanding common English usage.

 

[Stacyhs]

I think a lot of people of all political persuasions are idiots who are incapable of following simple instructions.

When I was teaching, I used to give my students a 'test'. The very first instruction read:

1) Do not begin the test until you have read all the instructions.

The last instruction said "Do not answer any of the questions."

Almost none of the students followed the instructions and instead answered the questions!

ETA: Looks like I've been jninja'd

 

[Trebuchet]

The people who just wrote their names failed the test of understanding common English usage.

The instructions actually said to read all the QUESTIONS before starting.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I remember a test is high school, all kinds of questions and directions. The first direction was to read all directions before starting the test. The last direction was that the only thing you needed to do to complete the test was to write your name on it. Can't tell you how many people just started answering question and trying to follow the directions for each question. Instead of following the first direction which was to read all directions first.

The people who just wrote their names failed the test of understanding common English usage.

The instructions actually said to read all the QUESTIONS before starting.

 

[Modified]

The instructions actually said to read all the QUESTIONS before starting.

Even so, people do not read test instructions the way a lawyer reads a contract. There are certain assumptions about the way a test works. If it had said "Read all of the instructions on the entire test, not just the instructions for each question, before answering any questions" then there might be a point. Otherwise, you're just identifying those students who are overly literal.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Even so, people do not read test instructions the way a lawyer reads a contract. There are certain assumptions about the way a test works. If it had said "Read all of the instructions on the entire test, not just the instructions for each question, before answering any questions" then there might be a point. Otherwise, you're just identifying those students who are overly literal.

This. Unless the teachers who pull this stupid little "Gotcha Test" stunt are stilling sitting in a theater watching "The Never Ending Story" or sitting at Olive Gardens because the soup, sandwich, and breadsticks should still be coming they are just confusing pedantics, and forced pedantics at that, for attention to detail.'

Hence the XKCD comic, the next to last frame of which should be carved into the forehead of a lot of people.

 

[The Man]

Even so, people do not read test instructions the way a lawyer reads a contract. There are certain assumptions about the way a test works. If it had said "Read all of the instructions on the entire test, not just the instructions for each question, before answering any questions" then there might be a point. Otherwise, you're just identifying those students who are overly literal.

This. Unless the teachers who pull this stupid little "Gotcha Test" stunt are stilling sitting in a theater watching "The Never Ending Story" or sitting at Olive Gardens because the soup, sandwich, and breadsticks should still be coming they are just confusing pedantics, and forced pedantics at that, for attention to detail.'

Hence the XKCD comic, the next to last frame of which should be carved into the forehead of a lot of people.

Exactly the intended point of the 'test', sometimes attention to detail needs to be overly literal. Though as students we have (or had) our own attention and details, like the guy in the other row who said "Psst..it's a trick just write you name". I don't think I'd gotten to reading any of the directions before that.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

Even so, people do not read test instructions the way a lawyer reads a contract. There are certain assumptions about the way a test works. If it had said "Read all of the instructions on the entire test, not just the instructions for each question, before answering any questions" then there might be a point. Otherwise, you're just identifying those students who are overly literal.

It depends on the purpose of the test. If it's just a cheap gotcha for the teacher to go "hurrhurr you didn't see that I wrote not to answer all the questions, i so smart", then it might not fit a classroom setting -- I see it more as a trick to play on your friends. In fact I remember reading about this trick in an issue of Donald Duck as a kid. It always had a page devoted to various pranks, tricks, and fun facts.

If the teacher does it to teach the kids to read exam questions carefully, it makes a lot more sense. I remember taking tests in high school that always had the same, generic set of instructions in the beginning, before the test itself. Then there was this one test that had different instructions, and not everyone caught that because they expected them to just be the same as they had always been.

Then again, "read all the questions before proceeding" sounds more like advice than an actual rule, and so failing to do so isn't exactly failing to read instructions carefully, more like a decision to not follow a rule the student views as pointless.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Exactly the intended point of the 'test', sometimes attention to detail needs to be overly literal. Though as students we have (or had) our own attention and details, like the guy in the other row who said "Psst..it's a trick just write you name". I don't think I'd gotten to reading any of the directions before that.

"LOL I wrote out a complete test of meaningless questions just to gotcha you because you assumed this test wouldn't literally operate differently than every test you have ever taken or would ever take for no reason" isn't teaching any sane, reasonable level of literalness that will ever be needed by any functioning human.

It's a stupid, faux-clever bit of, as stated "Communicating badly and acting clever when you aren't understood." And yes assuming a performance art level of faux-Vulcan, pseudo-autistic, alien robot machine code literalness for no reason is communicating badly.

There's thinking outside the box and there's thinking outside the planet.

 

[Trebuchet]

Ok, must continue the derail. The classic "test" starts out with:
THIS IS A TEST IN FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS.
And pretty much the first instruction is:
DO NOT ANSWER ANY OF THE QUESTIONS UNTIL YOU HAVE READ ALL OF THE QUESTIONS.
I've probably been given it 8-10 times now, including twice in the US Army.

One of the questions is:
IF YOU ARE THE FIRST TO REACH THIS POINT, STAND AT YOUR DESK AND SAY, "I AM THE FIRST TO REACH THIS POINT AND AM THE LEADER IN FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS!"
Invariably at least three people will do that.

Humans are pretty damn stupid. "President Trump" is proof of that statement.

 

[Stacyhs]

As one of those teachers who used to give that 'test', it was not for the purpose of being a 'gotcha' but to help the students realize the importance of following instructions. I cannot tell you how many times students lost points, therefore received lower grades, because they failed to follow instructions on assignments and tests. How many people's votes are going to be invalidated because they failed to follow simple instructions for voting by mail? Perhaps if they'd learned to read and follow instructions in school, their votes wouldn't end up in the trash in 2020.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Again you can hide behind the "But I'm just teaching how important it is to follow instructions!" if you want, but that only works if the instructions make sense within the context of the given scenario and this example absolutely doesn't.

Basically, you're punishing students for realizing "Wait why would there be a full page of questions if I'm only supposed to answer the first one?" instead of just blindly following instructions that don't make sense.

Even in the stupid gotcha test setup answering all the questions makes more sense. Why am I supposed to assume that my teacher wrote an entire page of meaningless questions for no reason rather than just assume the instructions aren't literal machine code.

 

[Andy_Ross]

It can always be justified I suppose.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Business "team building" classes pull this same thing.

Once in one of them the Navy made me sit through one person was tasked with writing out the instructions to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

But then the person running the "team building" would, oh so hilariously, stop the person at every step and offer some witty observation "But wait the instructions didn't tell you to take the butter knife out of the drawer" or "Wait where did the instructions tell you to buy the peanut butter" and other such droll Bobism level crap.

And it was the exact same "moral," to teach us about direction following.

It was Theater of the Absurd, not a lesson in attention to detail. Human beings don't operate on this kind of super-literal level. We observe for context. We're not operating on some line by line nested IF-THEN flowchart computer program.

 

[Trebuchet]

Business "team building" classes pull this same thing.

Oh, lord. What a horrendous waste of time those were. In one we were divided into groups and had to determine which Lion King character we were. Hakuna Matata!

Another time we went out to the parking lot and got arranged in a circle. Numbers were counted off. We had to toss a basketball to some arbitrary number, who then had to toss it to a different arbitrary number.

I was the guy who, when the "trainer" asked how we could make it faster, suggested reordering the circle, which, as the trainer expected, resulted in a chorus of "we can't do that!"

Wait, wasn't this supposed to be yet another Trump thread? (YATT)

 

[JoeMorgue]

Wait, wasn't this supposed to be yet another Trump thread? (YATT)

Trump would have just marked out all the questions in sharpie.

//In seriousness I'd almost like to spin this off into its own discussion.//

 

[Resume]

Oh, lord. What a horrendous waste of time those were. In one we were divided into groups and had to determine which Lion King character we were. Hakuna Matata!

Another time we went out to the parking lot and got arranged in a circle. Numbers were counted off. We had to toss a basketball to some arbitrary number, who then had to toss it to a different arbitrary number.

I was the guy who, when the "trainer" asked how we could make it faster, suggested reordering the circle, which, as the trainer expected, resulted in a chorus of "we can't do that!"

Wait, wasn't this supposed to be yet another Trump thread? (YATT)

Are you confusing your work experience with a Michael Scott conference room meeting?

 

[Safe-Keeper]

stupid, faux-clever

This reminds me of those brain teasers that were spammed all over Facebook by various companies some time ago (they might still be spammed all over Facebook, but I finally deleted my FB account a while ago so I wouldn't know). One variant was an algebra problem, only with objects, for example fruit. Like "banana + 5 = 8, 2 + apple = banana" and so on. The other showed a diagram of various water containers connected by pipes, and you were supposed to work out which tank would be filled first. I actually liked them, especially the algebra one. It was fun to work out the first couple of times.

However, both of them would always have this tiny detail that was fairly easy to notice. In the algebra one, there'd always be an additional object somewhere, like a second banana hidden behind the first in one of the lines of numbers and symbols. In the pipe one, one of the pipes was blocked.

People were apparently supposed to go "omg u didnt see that the pipe was blocked/that there was a second banana in the last line, hurrhur i so smart" in the comments. I just found it stupid.

 

[Stacyhs]

Again you can hide behind the "But I'm just teaching how important it is to follow instructions!" if you want, but that only works if the instructions make sense within the context of the given scenario and this example absolutely doesn't.

Basically, you're punishing students for realizing "Wait why would there be a full page of questions if I'm only supposed to answer the first one?" instead of just blindly following instructions that don't make sense.

Even in the stupid gotcha test setup answering all the questions makes more sense. Why am I supposed to assume that my teacher wrote an entire page of meaningless questions for no reason rather than just assume the instructions aren't literal machine code.

Wow. Who said anything about punishing students? I'm not 'hiding' behind anything and your unhinged rant is, frankly, disturbing. I'm out of this discussion.