prompt n.

[Garson O'Toole]

Education researchers used sentences as prompts in experiments in the
1960s. I do not know if the term was used earlier by behaviorists.

circa 1967, American educational research journal, Volume 4, American
Educational Research Association.

Over the ten training trials the prompt sentence for a given word pair
appeared twice in each of the five ordinal positions within the
paragraph. ...
Each frame in the "program" consisted of a prompt sentence containing
an English word as the subject ...

http://books.google.com/books?id=7cIrAAAAMAAJ&q=trials+prompt#search_anchor

Here is a 2005 book about "writing to the prompt" that provides some
evidence that your students use of the term is widespread.

Title   Writing to the prompt: when students don't have a choice
Author  Janet Angelillo
Publisher       Heinemann, 2005

http://books.google.com/books?id=zv5JAAAAYAAJ&


On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:54 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: prompt n.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It's tempting to say that the testing use of "prompt" has been
> influenced by technology (from Command Prompt), in which case this OED
> entry would be related. I am not convinced, however, that this is how
> it came into being--it does sound like it had more Behaviorist
> origins.
>
>> c. Computing. A word, symbol, or message automatically displayed on a screen to indicate that input  is required from the user.
>
>> 1977 Computer-Aided Design 9 151 Displaying and responding to prompts from the computer. 1985 Which Computer? Apr. 51/2Prompts and help messages reduce the possibility of making an error in the first place. 1992 Broadcasting 27 Jan. 35/2 An on-screen prompt encourages viewers to enter the names of household members viewing a given program. 2000 Daily Tel. 16 Mar. (Connected section) 14/2 Exit Windows to DOS mode..and change to drive letter A by typing A: at the C:> (or C:\\WINDOWS>) prompt.
>
> For example, consider the lines
>
>> Identify the key words in a test prompt.
>
> and
>
>> Identify the key words from a test prompt.
>
> and
>
>> Focus on the key words in the prompt!
>
> in the chapter Writing to a Prompt, in Winning Strategies for Test Taking.
> http://books.google.com/books?id=92Lq_j-HUqcC
>
> The book even identifies the type of questions that should be used in
> training students--the "released writing to a prompt questions".
>
> This is quite pervasive. I just grabbed the first book that popped up
> on the list.
>
> VS-)
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:30 PM, Gordon, Matthew J.
> <GordonMJ at missouri.edu> wrote:
>>
>> "prompt" is also common in rhetoric/composition contexts.
>>
>> -Matt Gordon
>>
>>
>> On 3/15/10 12:24 PM, "victor steinbok" <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>
>> In psychometrics, the body of a multiple-choice question is usually referred
>> to as "the prompt", but ed publishers call it "stem" or "root" with the
>> answer choices all referred to as "distractors" (even though one of them is
>> supposed to be correct). ;-) The editors I've worked with sometimes would
>> differentiate between the "question stem" and "prompt", the latter being a
>> general comment that applied to multiple questions, including instructions.
>> This seems reverse of what test specialists use, but these two groups rarely
>> talk to each other. But it can get very confusing if you work with both...
>>
>> VS-)
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > Typically, when I assign a paper to a class, I will write out and
>> > distribute several sentences of instructions and advice.  All of a sudden
>> > (it seems to me), my students are referring to such a document as "the
>> > prompt." (I would call it simply "the assignment"--or maybe, if I wanted to
>> > sound informal, "the specs").
>> >
>> > When asked about the term, some of my students associate it with their AP
>> > classes in high school. Is it a (behaviorist?) term that emanates from
>> > colleges of education? The use doesn't match any of the entries for _prompt_
>> > n.2 in the OED.
>> >
>> > --Charlie
>
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