Essay test

-This type of test differs from the completion test in degree rather than in kind.

-usually allows greater freedom of responses to question and require more writing

Advantages of essay test

1. Give students freedom to response within broad limits.

2. Guessing is eliminated.

3. Essay items are practical for testing a mall number of students.

4. Essay test reduce assembling time.

5. They ca measure divergent thinking.

Disadvantages and limitations of essay test

1. Difficult to score objectively

2. Extended essays measure only the limited aspects of student knowledge.

3. Questions are time consuming.

4. Eliminate guessing but not bluffing.

5. Requires a little more than rote memory.

6. Place a premium in writing.

Use of essay test to facilitate leaning

1. Favorable comments

Raises the quality of writing

Teaches students to organize, outline, and summarize assignments.

2. Arguments

Do not allow their students to revise and rewrite their work since time is
limited

Teachers over attention to details can destroy the themes of the essays

Situations that suggest the use of essay questions

1. If the test objectives specify students that have to write, recall or supply information,
an essay examination may be necessary.

2. When the class size is small, the teacher can afford to spend more time reading
essay responses.
3. Since multiple-choice tests are difficult to construct but easy to score, they are
considered more practical when the test can be reused.

Twenty categories of essay questions

1. Selective recall (bases given)

2. Evaluating recall (basis given)

3. Comparison of two things(in general)

4. Comparison of two things(on a single bases)

5. Causes or effects

6. Decision(for or against)

7. Explanation of the use or exact meaning of some phrase or statements in a passage

8. Summary of one unit of the test or some articles that were read.

9. Analysis

10. Statement of relationship

11. Illustrations or examples (the students own) of the principles in science, construction
in language, or other subject matter

12. Classification

13. Application of rules or principles in new situations

14. Discussion

15. Statement of aim

16. Criticism

17. Outline

18. Reorganization of facts

19. Formulation of new questions()

20. New methods or procedures.

Pointers on writing essay questions

1. Specify limitations

2. Structure the task

3. Make each item reactively short and increase the number of items.

4. Give all the students the same essay question if content is relevant.
Suggestions for rating or scoring essay questions

1. Remove the name from the papers before grading.

2. Read and evaluate each students answer.

3. Keep the scores of previously read items out of sight when evaluating remaining
questions.

4. Decide on policy for dealing with irrelevant responses.

5. If possible reread or have other teachers read the papers before returning them to
the students.

6. Check the scoring key against actual responses.

7. Be consistent when grading.

8. The mechanics of expression should be judge separately from what the students
write.

9. If possible, have two independent readings of the test send the use the average as
the final score.

10. Provide comments and correct errors.

11. Set realistic standards.

Factors to consider in assigning point values

1. Time needed to response

2. Complexity of the questions

3. Emphasis placed on the content

Other considerations in grading essay responses

1. Use appropriate methods to minimize biases

2. Pay attention only to the significant aspects of the answer.

3. Avoid letting personal idiosyncrasies affect the grading.

4. Apply uniform standards in grading all the papers.

Why essay test are still popular?

1. Essay test can indirectly measure attitudes, values, and opinions.

2. Good essay test are more easily prepared than good objective test.

3. Essay test are good learning experience.

 4. Oral question

It provides immediate feedback to both pupils and teachers.

Advantages

1. Both permit the examiner to determine how well the student can synthesize and
organize his/her ideas and express himself/herself.

2. Both re not dependent, as the multiple choice test, on the ability of the people to
recognize the correct answer,, both require the students know and are able to supply
the correct answer.

3. Both permit free responses by the students.

Limitations

1. Both provide for the variety of limited sampling content.

2. Both have lower rate reliability.

Developing rubrics for essay test

It is a competed package for scoring.

It has descriptions with either numbers or verbal labels to summarize levels of

proficiency.

Rubric is an evaluation tool for essay tests.

- it gives quantitative and qualitative descriptions of the different qualities of essay

responses.

Setting criteria

1. Descriptions must focus on the important aspects of an essay response.

2. The type of rating (holistic or analytic)must match the purpose of an assessment.

3. The descriptions of the criteria must be directly observable.

4. Ensure that the criteria are understood by students, parents, and others.

5. The characteristics and traits used in the scale should be clearly and specifically
defined.

6. Minimize the errors in scoring. These errors may be generosity of errors, central
tendency errors, and severity errors.

7. Make the scoring system feasible.