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Education QUESTION #6790
Question 1
A teacher writes a completion item: 'The ___ and ___ are the two major branches of government in Pakistan.' A student fills in 'judiciary' for the first blank and 'executive' for the second blank. Given the actual answer is 'legislature and executive,' how many marks should the teacher award, and what construction rule was violated?
  • Full marks; the student demonstrated sufficient knowledge
  • Partial credit is ambiguous because this item violates the rule against using too many blanks — when multiple blanks appear, scoring becomes unreliable and responses are difficult to evaluate unambiguously✔️
  • Zero marks because the judiciary is incorrect
  • Full marks because executive is correct
Correct Answer Explanation
A key rule for completion items states: when using blanks, do not include too many blanks in a single item. Multiple blanks create partial-credit ambiguity (one correct, one incorrect answer in a two-blank item), reduce item clarity, and make scoring inconsistent. This item should have been split into two separate items or rewritten as a direct question.