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A little about me and the purpose of this blog. I am a licensed high school teacher (Language Arts 6 - 12) in the state of Tennessee going on 13 years now. I have 7 children and drive a school bus. Love me or hate me, none of my students will tell you that I am a typical school teacher. I, like many, believe that education is woefully equipped to keep pace with technology. As a technology enthusiast and educator publishing on a crypto website, I am trying to do my small part to bridge this gap for as many people as I can. Recently, the development of AI has created an accelerated urgency for education to take its head out of the sand and teach relevant skills in the classroom. The resources, lessons, and philosophy I publish here, I use in my own classroom, and anyone (especially homeschoolers) can use this blog as a resource to supplement their own instruction. If you are new to my blog, I suggest starting at the beginning as I will be structuring my lessons here the same way I would for my classroom. Tips are appreciated. Questions and feedback in the comments are welcome. So if you are a teacher, student, or homeschooler that is motivated to learn about, teach, or utilize all available technology in education (or know someone who is), I encourage you to give me a follow: https://x.com/TheRealMrE09
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English Lesson 5: Using AI to Master Specific Job Questions
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This article will cover the second type of “long question.” They are referred to as Specific Job Questions. They are referred to as such because each question will ask which of the multiple choice options does a certain “job” in the text. There are endless variations of the way these could be asked, but here are some examples:
Given that all of the following are true, which one best illustrates …
Which choice provides the most specific information …
Which choice most effectively emphasizes the difficult nature of …
Which choice most clearly describes the process of …
Which choice provides the most effective transition …
Which choice most clearly summarizes the main idea of the paragraph …
There is a great deception in the way that these questions are worded. “Most” and “best” lead the student to assume that all of the options do that thing. In fact, ONLY ONE option will do the thing. Only one option will illustrate. Only one option will transition. Only one option will provide specific information. ONLY ONE option will do the “job.”
Example:
Which choice most effectively emphasizes the destructive potential of volcanic eruptions, as described in the passage?
- F. Volcanic eruptions release lava and ash.
- G. Lava flows can destroy homes, and ash clouds can disrupt air travel.
- H. Eruptions create new landforms like islands.
- J. Scientists use seismometers to study volcanoes.
In this example, it is not even necessary to have access to the passage in order to select the correct answer. Many Specific Job questions are like this. In this example the correct answer is obviously G. There is even a direct link between a key word in the sentence and a key word in the option. H and J obviously have nothing to do with destruction and F mentions lava and ash, but it relies on the reader to understand that lava and ash can be destructive. Only G mentions destruction explicitly.
Let's look at a trickier one. This one will require looking at the passage.
Even more impressive, however, was the beauty of the painting. Viewed from a distance, the colors looked muted, capturing the mood of the park.
Given that all of the choices are true , which provides the most effective and logical transition from the preceding paragraph to this one?
- A. No Change
- B. One thing that struck me was
- C. Many art critics are written about
- D. The debate rages on over
Okay, so I lied. The only reason that you have to look at the passage on this one is because the answer is No Change, and we need to see the original sentence. I do not need to read either the current paragraph or the preceding one to answer the question because ONLY ONE of the options contains a transition word — the original option. “However” is the only transition word in the options. You cannot transition without a transition word.
There are indeed some questions (but not many) that require a rereading of the paragraph. Sometimes students will see two sentences with a bracketed number between them [53] They look something like this:
Given that all of the choices are true, which of the following if added here [53] best transitions between the previous sentence and the next sentence.
In this case only one option will contain both relevant content AND a transition. As of the current writing of this article, there have never been many of these questions on any released practice exam or study guide — maybe 1 or 2 out of 75. In my opinion, the student should weigh carefully how much time to spend rereading. Oftentimes these questions should just be strategically guessed and disregarded.
With enough practice it is possible to identify this type of question very quickly and immediately recognize whether or not it is necessary to reread a portion of the text. This is a critical skill for drastically reducing the time it takes to answer these “long” questions. Here is how to set up your AI so that you can make many practice problems
I am preparing practice questions for the ACT. I need to explain a type of question to you and then have you create several examples of those questions for students to practice. Do you understand?
The type of question that I want to cover is called Specific Job. In these questions the student will be asked about a phrase from a passage, and then asked about the specific function of that phrase as it is or if it were changed. Examples of specific job questions are: "given that all of the following are true which one best ..."; "which one provides the most effective ..."; "which one most clearly ..." ; "which one most effectively ..." ; "which one provides the most ..." ; "which one provides the clearest ..." ; "given all of the following are true, which one best illustrates ..." ; "which choice provides the most specific information" ; "Which choice most effectively emphasizes the difficult nature of ..." ; "Which choice most clearly describes the process of ..." When the multiple choice options are given, only one of the options will fulfill the specific job or function mentioned in the question. The incorrect answers will clearly not function in the way that was asked for. You are not limited to the examples I have given you; you may create other specific job questions of this type if you think it is relevant to the ACT. First create a large passage and then give me 3 example problems beneath the passage that relate to it, so that I can see that you understand what I want you to do.
After it gives you the result, check the logic very carefully. Again, when I do these complicated tasks, I am using Deep Think on Grok. If it does not give a good result, you may have to spend some time telling it what to fix. After you are satisfied with the result, it is best to lock in the AI’s purpose as we did for the Main Idea questions like so:
Perfect. This entire conversation will be dedicated to creating these types of questions for my students to practice. I want you to solidify what you have created above Specific Job questions into your memory. Every time you create a response I want you to remind yourself of exactly what and how you created the questions above. I will use the above creations as the lesson/explanation for my students. Going forward I want you to create different variations of these types of questions without listing or explaining the correct answer unless I specifically ask you to create an answer key. Do you understand?
As with the Main Idea questions from the previous article, it is now best to leave this chat as a stand alone conversation used for no other purpose. From this point on, I wouldn’t type anything other than “Create another variation” and “Give me the answer key with an explanation for each multiple choice option.
