English is my native language and I have done extensive technical writing. It is far more difficult to express the same idea with just a few words than with many. I suspect this causes the exam question writers to create complex and confusing sentence structures to try and include too much into a limited number of words.
When I write technical documents, papers, and presentations, first I write my ideas down. Then I organize my ideas. Then I write complete paragraphs. Finally I condense, condense, condense. If I am not constrained by space, it is easier to be very clear using short sentences. If I must fit my words into a smaller space, I must start combining sentences into fewer. That can be very challenging as a writer and takes a lot of time.
The exam format includes many short questions in a limited time period. The questions are often situational, so the writers try to describe a complex situation in a small number of words. I suspect that challenges the writers' abilities to write short questions.
My suggesting for trying to read those complex sentences is to break them down into smaller sentences yourself. I do that when I find my own sentences are long and awkward. They contain several phrases that each modify the meaning. "The dog was in the park which was by the lake." Becomes "The dog was in the park. The park was by the lake." That takes more time during the exam, but I must do that myself when I struggle to read long confusing sentences written by others. Saving Changes...
Derek MolnarSenior Project Manager| Children's National HospitalWashington, DC, United States
If you are referring to PMP exam practice questions, I have noticed that courses have questions of varying English complexity. In my experience, some questions were so poorly worded and confusing that I switched courses. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
I would love to help PMI do better in this regard. I may just offer to do so sometime. It’s really important that exam questions are written clearly. I’m a native speaker of English and an advanced-level writer. The questions are often confounding for me. Saving Changes...
The "real" exam questions are thoroughly vetted before they start to get scored - that is why there are control questions on each candidate's exam. If the results from the control period show that a particular question is not being answered as expected, the question stem or its answers would get rewritten or in an extreme case, the question would be discarded.
Kiron, and Keith in particular, both of you clearly do not have first hand experience with the current state of the Broken-English Grammar that is being used in the current PMI examinations right now. It is atrocious, and disgraceful !!! The authorities within PMI who should be concerned about this current state of affairs clearly have no first hand appreciation of what is going on ! I call on anyone that knows a serious person in a position of authority over the language quality currently being used within PMI Certification Exams, to call upon that person and/or that team within PMI to make a serious effort toward investigating this problem. Sign up as "Ghost Candidates" and attempt to take any of the key exams. I can attest to this problem existing with the DASSM exam, and the Citizen Developer Business Architect exam. It is a huge problem !!! But I'm pretty sure it cuts across a wide array of the current available Certification Exams. Please don't blindly assume that these reports are an exaggeration. Sign-up for an exam yourself... e.g. DASSM, Citizen Developer Business Architect, etc... and make an attempt to take the exam. You will clearly experience how bad the quality English Language grammar used actually is.
Also, for fear of a negative reaction to this report being made, you can see that people have chosen to be 'anonymous'. Well, I am concerned enough to report experiencing the same situation across these two recently taken certification exams, and I am open to being engaged directly by someone in a position to take further action within PMI, to investigate, uncover the root cause and fix the problem. I have three existing PMI Certifications that I acquired prior to the year 2021 for which I never encountered this sad state of 'Broken English' being used to create the exam questions. And then I have a fourth Certification for which I encountered this Broken English for the first time last year, which was the Citizen Developer Practitioner. Fortunately for me, when I did a re-take of the exam I prepared myself to handle the broken English I had encountered for the first time, and I passed this exam in my 2nd attempt. But I am so sad, upon going back to do a couple more Certification Exams this year to find the situation is so much worse than what I met last year.
I can't comment on the vetting process for the Citizen Developer or DA-related exam questions as I haven't participated in volunteer exam writing sessions for those, but I can attest the PMP exam questions do go through a thorough QC process based on their inclusion as control questions for a period of time.
I would suggest directing these concerns to PMI Customer Care as this would be good feedback for future improvement.
Kiron
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1 reply by anonymous
Mar 26, 2024 7:38 AM
anonymous
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They have outsourced / offshored some of this work. So it's not a matter of "providing feedback" - It's a matter of cost vs quality. Clearly cost won out over quality.
There are several threads on Reddit about this. Everyone who's worked for a while in IT can tell what's going on.
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Anonymous
I believe non-native speakers have worked on some of the questions in PMP Study Hall. That is the only explanation I can think of.
After having interacted with PMI Support, and based on work experience in IT, I have a pretty good idea of the nationality of those that have worked on the questions, We don't need to be insensitive - but I'm sure others have made the same observations.
The quirky language (words, sentence structure, grammar) is not a super big deal as long as the question is comprehensible -- however in some of the PMP Study Hall questions, the language is quite distracting or confusing. I made a search for this topic, after a particularly strangely worded questions.
Those of us who have worked long in IT are quite de-sensitized to these types of problems - but this IS an American test, and I would have expected native English... (well, native or not is a matter of definition, isn't it?).
You can use the report function if you come across a particularly poorly worded question. I reported a few, but that's a distraction.
But yeah, you're not imagining.... Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Mar 21, 2024 3:20 PM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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Yinka -
I can't comment on the vetting process for the Citizen Developer or DA-related exam questions as I haven't participated in volunteer exam writing sessions for those, but I can attest the PMP exam questions do go through a thorough QC process based on their inclusion as control questions for a period of time.
I would suggest directing these concerns to PMI Customer Care as this would be good feedback for future improvement.
Kiron
They have outsourced / offshored some of this work. So it's not a matter of "providing feedback" - It's a matter of cost vs quality. Clearly cost won out over quality.
There are several threads on Reddit about this. Everyone who's worked for a while in IT can tell what's going on. Saving Changes...
Thank you for posting this - I feel like I'm losing my mind reading these questions. The only thing that makes sense is that the content creation is being offshored and that the questions are being written by non-native speakers. I think it's extra frustrating because the test is supposed to be gauging out ability to communicate clearly and focus on value to the customer - talk about betraying the PMI code of ethics. The UX on every level of the PMP universe is truly staggering.
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