ESSAY EXAMINATION

Essays are generally scholarly pieces of writing giving the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of anarticle, a pamphlet and a short story. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays.

How Essay Test Are Conducted?

Essays have become a major part of formal education. Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills; admission essays are often used by universities in selecting applicants, and in the humanities and social sciences essays are often used as a way of assessing the performance of students during final exams.Essay test is a type of test that usually allows greater freedom of response to questions and requires more writing.

Advantages of Essay Tests

1. The essay examination allows students to express their ideas with relatively few restraints.
2. It involves recall and there are no options to select from, therefore, guessing is eliminated. The student must suply rather than select the good response.
3. Essay items are good for testing small numbers of students. However, as the number of student increases, the advantage of essay test decreases.

Disadvantages and Limitations of Essay Tests

1.        Essay questions are time consuming to teachers and students. Students often spend much time answering only one or two essay questions. Teachers, on the other hand, also devote much time reading lengthy responses.

2. Essay responses are subject to bluffing. Essays eliminate guessing but not bluffing. Poorly prepared students desperately attempt to get a passing grade by answering something even if the responses are not related to the questions asked.

3. In practice, very few essays require originalitiy and most emphasize the lengthy enumeration of memorized facts.

Ways To Improve Essay Test

Its up now to the teachers to carefully examine the advantages and disadvantages in giving essay questions during the exam. At the end of the day, what the teacher wanted during the assessment is to find out the students’ progress in the course.

STPM EXAMINATION

INTRODUCTION

STPM is a pre-university examination taken by students in Malaysia. STPM is one of the two major pre-university systems for admission to Malaysian public universities. Students technically may apply for admission to degree-level courses with a variety of pre-university examinations considered equivalent with STPM, including A-level.

How SPM Is Conducted?

The existing examination is conducted based on one and a half years of form six studies, comprising the lower six and upper six form. In 2012,the examination will be conducted in two modes. The first mode is for students who are currently in upper six form and will be under the existing examination system. The second mode is for lower six form students in 2012 who will be the first cohort for the new assessment system. They will take the first term examination in November 2012.In the new system, the duration of form six studies is similar to the present system. The allocation of teaching period remains the same. The curriculum is divided into three parts based on topic areas.

Advantages Of STPM

• Ø  Through the new system:
• Ø  Students will have a lesser curriculum load to study
• Ø  More opportunities to obtain better results.
• Ø  The introduction of SBA is in line with the aspiration of the Education Ministry to develop human capital.
• Ø  Consistent with the minister' s vision to strengthen and make the assessment and evaluation system more holistic, with an emphasis on outcome based education that focuses more on students
• Ø  Less exam oriented

Disadvantages of STPM?

• Ø  The grading system
• Ø  Difficulties in pursuing studies in public universities even when the CGPA are high

Ways To Improve STPM

The grading system should be modified and increase the CGPA marks. The government should provide more qualified teacher and high level thinking teacher to teach STPM students.

THE SPM EXAMINATION

The Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM), or the Malaysian Certificate of Education, is a national examination taken by all fifth-year secondary school students in Malaysia, equivalent to eleventh grade in American's K–12 (education). It is set and examined by the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate (Lembaga Peperiksaan Malaysia).

SPM is equivalent to the O-Level and is the second last public examination at the secondary school level before the entry into a tertiary level education at a university or other higher education institutions. The Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM), being a pre-university study and equivalent to the A-Level, is the last public examination at the secondary school level. Other available pre-university studies in Malaysia include matriculation, foundation study, A-Level, etc., which are conducted at a college or university.

How SPM Is Conducted?

This assessment include about 7 to 11 subjects, where the students are required to take additional subjects if they want. The quantity of test are results according to their main stream.

Students of all stream will placed in a hall they need to do those exams as scheduled.

Advantages of SPM

1.      Student who get their good results can pursue their higher education onwards.

2.      To promote competition among students. They work harder to improve their knowledge and skills. In this way they learn more.

3.      Excellent tools to determine the efficacy of teaching methods

Disadvantages of SPM

1.      high pressure on students,

2.      negative consequences for poorly performing schools

3.      not developing long-term thinking

4.      Too much of subjects

Ways to improve SPM

The subjects SPM examination should be lessen to avoid student’s pressure. The exam should be divided into 3 semester to lower the burden of students. The format should be the latest one and higher thinking level.

UPSR FOR YEAR SIX STUDENTS

 

Primary School Achievement Test or also known as Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah is a national examination taken by year six primary student. Students are required to take five subjects and the results will be announced at the end of year.

HOW IT IS CONDUCTED

Students will be sitting at the exam hall and do their exam. The exams will be in objectives and subjective.

ADVANTAGES OF UPSR

·       Primary school can experienced the first national exam before entering for secondary level

·       Students can know about their abilities and knowledge about their education

·       Students those who gets good grade will be having a chance to enter cluster or high performances school to pursue their secondary.

DISADVANTAGES OF UPSR

·       This exam may be stressful for some students.

·       Competition between students will be occurs to get the good grades in exam.

·       For lower grade students will be dejected from entering a good school for secondary.

WAYS TO IMPROVE UPSR

·       Teacher should guide every student equally and make them understand about the format of exam.

·       Students should get prepared well by their parents, teacher and others by bringing them for extra classes or motivation classes

·       The questions prepared for UPSR exam should be equivalent to the level of students to cope with it and not too difficult and government should be wise and not letting any papers to be leaked.

UPSR FOR YEAR SIX STUDENTS

 

Primary School Achievement Test or also known as Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah is a national examination taken by year six primary student. Students are required to take five subjects and the results will be announced at the end of year.

HOW IT IS CONDUCTED

Students will be sitting at the exam hall and do their exam. The exams will be in objectives and subjective.

ADVANTAGES OF UPSR

·       Primary school can experienced the first national exam before entering for secondary level

·       Students can know about their abilities and knowledge about their education

·       Students those who gets good grade will be having a chance to enter cluster or high performances school to pursue their secondary.

DISADVANTAGES OF UPSR

·       This exam may be stressful for some students.

·       Competition between students will be occurs to get the good grades in exam.

·       For lower grade students will be dejected from entering a good school for secondary.

WAYS TO IMPROVE UPSR

·       Teacher should guide every student equally and make them understand about the format of exam.

·       Students should get prepared well by their parents, teacher and others by bringing them for extra classes or motivation classes

·       The questions prepared for UPSR exam should be equivalent to the level of students to cope with it and not too difficult and government should be wise and not letting any papers to be leaked.

ORAL EXAM

 

 

 

 

The oral exam also known as oral test is a practice in many schools and disciplines in which the teacher gives the exams in questions or topic form and students are need to answers and presents the speech in classroom. This is done in all school and students are compulsory to take part in it.

PURPOSE OF ORAL TEST

Oral test is done by all school to measure the students capabilities on how fluently they can speak and understand the language.


HOW ORAL TEST CONDUCTED.

Students will be given a few topics to choose by their respective teachers. They will be given a shortage time to prepare their task to present in the class. This oral test will be conducted 2 times in one year, first is individually and another will be in groups. The marks will be given to the student according their performance and the percentages of the marks will be add on their mid term exam and final exam respectively .


ADVANTAGES

• Students will have chances to choose their own topic.
• Duration of time for presentation are short.
• Students are able to practice their tasks before presenting
• Enable to see classmates performances
• Question was already known earlier

DISADVANTAGES                                                     

Short time for preparations

Consume time for individual presentation

Sudden question as to by teacher

Student are exposed in front of classroom

Lack of confidence and nervous

WAYS TO IMPROVE ORAL TEST

Prepare latest formats for oral test

Teacher should explain the formats clearly and the do’s and don’ts during oral test

Student should be encouraged to used proper language widely

Allocation of time and marks should be given fairly to students according to their presentations

　

 

 

MUET IS COMPULSARY FOR UNIVERSITIES STUDENTS

 

The Malaysian University English Test or well known as MUET is a test of English language proficiency and largely for university admission. MUET is set conducted by Malaysian Examinations Council. Besides that, MUET is also recognized in Malaysia and Singapore.

PURPOSE OF MUET

MUET is conducted in Malaysia in purpose to measure student proficiency level in English language. It is also as prerequisite for university admission. Next is for placements in various academic programs and for eligible to universities.

HOW MUET IS CONDUCTED?

MUET are consist of four components, which are listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Listening= 45 marks

Speaking = 45 marks

Reading= 120 marks

Writing = 90 marks

Candidates are rated into six bands.

BANDS    SCORE AGRREGATED        DESCRIPTIONS                                        

Band 1=      below 100                       Extremely limited user

Band 2 =    100-139                           Limited user

Band 3=     140-179                           Modest user

Band 4=    180-219                           Competent user

Band 5=    220-259                          Good user

Band 6=    260-300                          Very good user

 

ADVANTAGES OF MUET

     Helps students to learn how to speak and write in English better.

     Understand English language are better in high level.

     Increase student’s self-confidence.

     Students also able to use English fluently and very after graduations.

 

DISDAVANTAGES OF MUET

     Students will be packed with lots of subjects.

     Low grade students need to repeat it again.

     Students have to spend a lot of money if they failed.

     Candidates that failed also have to delay their graduation.

WAYS TO IMPROVE MUET?

     Students need to do lots of modal papers before taking MUET.

     Teacher should prepare the student well before sitting for exam.

     One should not force candidates to take MUET.

     Ministry of Education and Malaysian Examination Council must prepare a good strategy in minimizing the terms and condition for the qualification of MUET with current times protocol.