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.