Practice Multiple Choice Test Feedback: Question 3

It is unlikely that a student who is unskilled in untangling negative statements

(a) will quickly understand multiple choice items written in this way
(b) will not quickly understand multiple choice items written in this way
(c) will quickly understand multiple choice items not written in this way
(d) will not quickly understand multiple choice items not written in this way

If this question was confusing on first reading, one way to "untangle" it would be to cancel out the negatives -- "It is unlikely that a student who is unskilled in untangling . . ." could be reworded to "It is likely (or possible) that a student skilled in untangling . . ." Don't try to cancel out the "un-" prefixes in "untangling" or "understanding"! Questions like this are unfair, because they test more for your ability to work through the logic of the question than for your understanding of the material. If your prof likes to give you questions like this, practice "decoding" statements with multiple negatives (quickly), as part of your study routine.

Level of learning: Analysis. The only reason this question is at such a high level is that you have to do some close reasoning to figure out what it is asking. The answer is (a). (b) is false (being the opposite of (a)) and as for (c) and (d), there is no telling how a student will do on other types of test questions. One advantage of higher level questions is that you may have some chance of "reasoning out" the correct response.

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