Advantages and Disadvantages of Essay Assessment

The task of every teacher and professor is to assess their students’ progress. Unfortunately, this task is not easy to fulfill because all assessment methods have some weak points. For example, one of the common assessment methods is to give a student to write an essay. It shows the level of understanding of a certain topic and the levels of writing, reading, research, and other academic skills.

The method of essay writing is popular and pretty reliable. Nonetheless, some drawbacks are inevitable too. The experts from a cheap essay service, AffordablePapers, have helped understand the good and bad about essay writing. Our informative guide highlights the main advantages and disadvantages of essay assessment.

About Various Assessment Methods

Before we begin to review essay assessment pros and cons, we need to remind you of other assessment methods. These are as follows:

• True or false tests. These tests provide quick scores and can be easily created. Nonetheless, they have a high chance of guessing, which increases chances for success up to 50%.
• Multiple-choice tests. By giving students these tests, it is possible to exclude guessing. But, in the meanwhile, they provide little room for critical thinking.
• Short answers. These answers offer students to provide quick and short responses. However, they may not be sometimes enough to reveal everything a student means.

As you can see, each method has some cons. Now, we will focus on the 4^th method – essay writing.

Higher-Level Learning Objectives

Essay questions are frequently used in essay tests, and they are suited well for testing higher-level learning. Due to their nature, they require more time to be answered. This kind of test follows Bloom’s hierarchy. Students are supposed to construct certain sentences by using concrete verbs. They will be given synonym words. It develops cognition in students and so is beneficial for the human brain.

On the other hand, it has one sufficient drawback. Due to the reduced time during the examination, students may not reveal their potential to the fullest. Therefore, it can be given as a home assignment for better efficacy.

Check also An Introduction to Chicago Style Formatting of Papers (teachingbd24.com)

Holistic Scoring

Another popular method used by many educators is holistic scoring. Its principle is pretty simple. A teacher reads all the answers and gives grades according to the quality of those answers. But, commonly, it is applied for a group of students and not for a single student. Therefore, it is better to use open-ended responses.

This method seems to be pretty fine. Notwithstanding, a lot depends on the personal judgment of a teacher. It may not always be objective.

Analytic Scoring

Another approach is called analytic scoring. This approach requires finding the essential parts for ideal answers. First, a teacher should list the main elements obligatorily included in the text. Then, students should decide when and how to implement those elements. Again, a teacher assesses the quality of the provided answers and thus gives grades.

This approach has the same drawback as the previous one. A teacher may not be objective enough.

Certain Dangers

Now, we’d like to underline serious drawbacks in essay evaluation. The first one has been mentioned right above. Not all teachers are objective all the time long. They may not like certain students and thus deprive the latter of many grades due to subjective opinion.

The second danger is no limitation. Often, teachers overload students with possible variants in answering essay questions. It is vital to define a certain limit in those questions so that students don’t spend time answering unnecessary questions.

Too little time is another issue to solve. When students write essays at home, they have enough time to handle them. A time during a test is much shorter, and it induces the issue of time management. Educators should reconsider the time that can be allowed for essay writing.

Tips for Students

If you are a student and want to get the highest grades for your essay writing, you should boost your skills. We will help to improve them. Make allowances for the following tips:

• Control your time. As one of the common problems in essay writing is a time limit, you should improve your time management skills. Learn and try different techniques to get faster.
• Brush up your grammar. Make a habit of repeating all grammar rules. Pass at least 2-4 rules daily.
• Practice free writing. This popular writing technique will help to elevate your skills quite fast. Choose a random topic and write for 15 minutes without a stoppage. Then, check what you’ve managed to write and write another essay to improve what was wrong. It helps to speed up writing and make you ready for various topics.

Write Essays with Professionals

At times, students struggle with their academic papers. Their project may be so weak that a teacher may easily evaluate its quality without any assessment method. If you feel you cannot handle a certain essay or any other piece of writing properly, it may be reasonable to use the help of one of the custom-writing agencies.

They have several hundreds of professional writers who can easily handle any piece of writing. Just review detailed profiles and select the most appropriate expert. They will become your devoted assistant to tackle your essay in any suitable way:

• Write and rewrite;
• Edit and proofread;
• Outline and research;
• Cite and make references;
• Generate relevant topics, etc.

Use professional helpers to learn from their rich experience. The cost is pretty fair and affordable.

The Bottom Line

As you can see, the issue of essay assessment is not easy. It has pros and cons, which should always be considered before an educator selects a certain method to evaluate their students’ successes. Perhaps one day, someone will invent a perfect evaluation method with no drawbacks. Meanwhile, educators should vary all the methods to get a precise judgment as possible.