ESSAY

• What is an Essay?
• Structure of an Essay
• Advantages of Essays
• Disadvantages of Essays
• More on Essays - Download the full pdf

WHAT IS AN ESSAY?

An Essay is an assessment question that requires an answer in a sentence, paragraph, or short composition. Essay assessments are usually classified as subjective assessments as there are normally a variety of responses.

According to Trigwell, there are 3 Standard forms of essays:

1. Role Play Essays

Students respond to the essay as if he/she is performing the role assessing in the essay. For example: Write a letter to the local county council, explaining the environmental issues in the area, and requesting them to produce some measures; giving evidences and social arguments from government reports.

2. Structured Essays

Structured Essays are essays which have specific questions or topics that require answers. For example: In Shakespeare’s play – Hamlet, discuss and compare some of the soliloquies in terms of its style, syntax and imagery.
This type of essays is useful if the assessors wish to test a specific knowledge and techniques, it is also easier to mark as the assessors know what type of answers to expect.

3. Interpretation of Data Evidence Essays

Students are asked to write an essay based on data from a report/experiment they produced or from an external source. For example: Using the measurements found in the laboratory, explain and discuss the chemical reactions between the two main elements found.
This type of essays is greatly pragmatic, using data the students collected, allow the students to reflect and analyze.

An essay is usually expected to consist of an

• Introduction/ Aims/ Objectives
• Major points and ideas explained and summarized
• Results/Related points/Issues/ or others depending on the topic
• Conclusion - future work

ADVANTAGES OF ESSAYS

• Essays have the ability to assess all levels of learning objectives.
• It encourages original and creative thinking.

DISADVANTAGES OF ESSAYS

• Due to the subjective nature of essay assessments, grading is very unreliable even for the same assessor at different periods.
• Grading may be influenced by other factors such as handwriting and length of response.
• As essays are very time-consuming to answer and to correct, they are not recommended if only low-level of learning outcomes are assessed which can be assessed by multiple choices or short answers.
• Although guessing is not possible in essay assessments, but “bluffing” is.
• It is also not advisable to give the topic of the essay to the students at an early date. This may give rises to surface learning where students concentrate all their efforts in completing the essay only.

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