Spelling questions

There are many ways to make spelling questions (e.g. for language teaching) in Moodle:

• You can use some standard Moodle question types:
  • Short-Answer question type
  • Essay question type

• Or you can install some additional third-party question types:

• • Drag and drop matching question type
  • Essay (auto-grade) question type
  • Formulas question type
  • Gapfill question type

Examples

With the Gapfill question type

• Use the Gapfill question type ( with the following settings: Drag and Drop | Fixed Gap Size |Options after text). This creates a structure that is almost perfect.

• Here we have created a question, where we have 12 spaces available. For distractors, I entered all of the letters of the alphabet.

Note: Unfortunately, the Gapfill question type always shuffles the options. The plugin author figured that a checkbox for turning off shuffle would have added rarely used complexity :(

• Teachers just need to duplicate the question, then type the letters of the spelling words in between each bracket. (And record themself reading the word).

• Since this is being used by elementary students and is a spelling test, having the "answers" in alpha order would be helpful.

• Options:

With the Drag and drop matching question type

You can create the previous question with the Drag and drop matching question type. It does "work". However, gapfill is so much more elegant and easy to use. (Yes,it adds a bit of additional complexity). The Drag and Drop built-in question ends up with teachers having to enter a number that corresponds to the correct letter (which is kind of weird for teachers). Thus, the question ends up looking like this:.

Plus, if we have mixed upper and lower case, the answers double.

Gapfill is so much more elegant. IIt would look like this: [t][h][e]. Much easier for the teacher to enter.

I can see utilizing a strict order for elementary students.

With the formulas question

• Set:

Global variables: alphabet=["","a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k","l","m","n","o","p","q","r","s","t","u","v","w","x","y","z"];

Answer: [13,15,15,4,12,5]

Part's text: {_0:alphabet:MCE}{_1:alphabet:MCE}{_2:alphabet:MCE}{_3:alphabet:MCE}{_4:alphabet:MCE}{_5:alphabet:MCE}

• And you get this:

With the Essay (auto-grade) question type

You can make a glossary of common spelling errors. See Essay_(auto-grade)_question_type#Glossary_of_common_errors