Question types in english language diagnostic testing

English language proficiency testing, like large-scale testing in many other domains, often uses multiple-choice questions, to exploit the efficiency of automatic marking. An experiment supplementing established mcq tests with very short free-text answer questions in English diagnostic testing has shown that the latter are better discriminators at the lower end of student ability. Although not economic with paper-based marking on a large scale, the Assess By Computer e-assessment software offers marking options for such answers which make constructed-answer tests a realistic option.