Written examinations contribute immensely to the assessment of students' knowledge and skills in their fields of study. My vast experience in dealing with university examinations, both as an examiner and eternal examiner of other universities, has revealed that most students fail examinations mainly because of confusing ways in which lecturers set their examination questions. Sometimes, some lecturers set examination questions which they cannot satisfactorily answer them
selves. 

Today, I have decided to touch on
this sensitive issue, not to shame anyone, but to chastise those who find them
selves guilty after reading this article. Let us imagine this seriously, setting examination questions to which one cannot provide answers, and expecting students to pass that examination. 

This is not an exaggeration, for it happens in tertiary institutions every examination season. 

Some lecturers have difficulties in setting unambiguous examination questions. 

For example, where they want students to explain concepts, they indicate that students should either discuss or evaluate. In linguistics, they say such lecturers have a big problem with English syntax and semantics.  Some grammatical errors found in examination papers are not only outrageous, but also embarrassing. What boggles the mind is that some of the papers that have problems reflect that they went through internal examination/moderation, and others through external examination/moderation.

It is common to find students resort to narrating or just writing anything they know about a question after having failed to comprehend what the question demands. Some of the words and phrases used by lecturers result in questions which are vague, ambiguous and misleading to students.  

Worse still, it is incredulous that
some examination papers do not have clear instructions. When this
happens, it has disastrous effects on students.  

In their study related to this, Blair Lehman and others (2013, p. 85) found out that “When learners (students) struggle (in examinations), they can experience a host of negative affective states, such as confusion, frustration and even anger in more extreme cases.”

 In some cases, lecturers set questions on topics that they did not cover in their teaching, while in other cases, examination questions are set from topics which lecturers touched on the surface, and did not do justice to these areas. Therefore, when students struggle to interpret questions in the examination, do not expect them to provide correct answers. It is simple to detect that the problem was in the question paper by analysing error patterns after the examination. In most cases, students’ answer scripts reflect patterns showing that they struggled to comprehend certain questions during the examination.  

Also, students get discouraged when all the questions in the examination are based on one verb, for example, ‘discuss’.

 In other cases, lecturers literally intimidate students before the examination by saying to them “Only 20% of you will pass my examination”, or something to that effect; or “Okay guys, you will see my true colours in the Great Hall” (the examination venue). 

These negative pronouncements will definitely have negative effects on the concerned students. Such comments should be strongly condemned and discouraged in academia.  

To avert these and other examination-related problems, faculties and departments must develop and adopt strict protocols for examination-setting and marking.  In their study titled “Relationship Between Examination Questions and Bloom’s Taxonomy”, Karl O Jones and others (2014) provide useful information that lecturers can use when setting examination questions in any field of study. 

The researchers explain that “Bloom's taxonomy is a classification system of educational objectives based on the
level of student understanding
necessary for achievement or mastery. It   contains six levels, with the
 principle that competence at a higher level implies a reasonable degree of competence at   the lower levels.”   

What is more practical about the work of these scholars is that they provide an example of the comparison of the cognitive level of module learning outcomes and examination questions, which makes it easy for lecturers to comprehend and adapt for their use when setting examination questions.

What is more important is to set plain and clear examination questions. An examination should not be a hide-and-seek game in which the student is the loser.

*Prof Jairos Kangira is a professor of English at the University of Namibia. E-mail address: kjairos@gmail.com