What is the teacher's purpose behind giving short answer tests? (site 1)

Short answer test are simply meant to test student's grasp of the fundamentals of a certain subject or knowledge area.

Students are meant to supply brief concise responses to questions mostly using their own word or terms. These allows students with a good knowledge of the topic to express themselves freely.

Without knowing the fundamentals of the topic, giving a reasonable answer to short answer test will be almost impossible as there isn't an opportunity to guess as in objective or multiple choice questions.

Hence, short answer test are meant to test student's grasp or understanding of a topic.

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uh since this is clearly a troll i'll just answer for points.

your answer is oof.