Greeting to all guyz .

Today i tell you about essay writing . Its like article writing . I hope yoy guyz must like it .

What is an essay?

Tom Kubiszyn and Gary Borich

“...demands that the student compose a response, often extensive, to a question for which no single response or pattern of responses can be cited as correct to the exclusion of all other answers.”

Introduction .

Writing compositions, especially essays is an important part of the English language learning process in Pakistan. Both personal experience and observation show that the effectiveness of the composition and essay type questions is not properly utilized. Almost everything from teaching how to write essays to the construction of the essay-type question to its marking and grading involves problems .

Essay questions are used to measure such abilities and skills as the objective test items cannot measure effectively. Essay questions help in achieving important learning objectives such as the ability to recall, select, organize, and express ideas, and the ability to provide rather than identify information. So, the essay questions are used for measuring complex learning objectives.

Essay questions give students a degree of freedom. Students get the freedom of response,of selecting, relating information, and presenting ideas in their own words. This freedom, though it makes essay questions valuable, also creates difficulties.

#For example, the essay item construction requires great care, it must contain validity,

then, evaluating the answers is a difficult and time-consuming task, etc. However, the learning objectives achieved through essay questions are so valuable that the difficulties that such questions involve can be tackled. The present study focuses on the difficulty of obtaining scorer reliability. The unreliability of the scoring is perhaps the most serious limitation of the essay questions. Different teachers give different scores to the same answers to essay questions, the scores of even the same teachers vary if the scoring in done at different times. So there are great variations in scoring the same answer. The present study is an attempt to suggest an objective and reliable model of scoring for the fifteen marks essay question which the students of The Islamia University of Bahawalpur are required to attempt in the

B.A. examination. In the subject of English (Language) which the students are required to pass as a compulsory subject, the students are asked to choose one item from a list of usually five extended-response essays. The present is an attempt to identify the elements/ components of the essay and to objectify the scoring of the free-response essay questions by suggesting a pattern to achieve inter-scorer reliability.

Essays: Their learning outcomes:

Essay questions may be more useful than objective items as they help in measuring certain complex learning objectives effectively.

Kubiszyn and Borich (1990:101)

list some of the learning outcomes for which essay questions may be used:

• Analyze relationships

• Arrange items in sequence

• Compare positions

• State necessary assumptions

• Identify appropriate conclusions

• Explain cause-and-effect relations

• Formulate hypotheses

• Organize data to support a viewpoint

• Point out strengths and weaknesses

• Produce a solution for a problem.

Advantages of Essay Tests:

i. They allow free response:

This is perhaps the greatest advantage of this type of tests from the students’

point view.

ii. They eliminate guessing:

Because the students are required to recall and supply rather than select from the

given information.

iii. They are practical:

Compared with multiple choice tests, the essay tests are easier to prepare and

score, and take less time. That is why many teachers prefer them.

iv. They reduce assembling time:

They are easier to administer and conduct.

v. They can measure divergent thinking:

Because they give great freedom of response, they provide more chances of

unusual responses reflecting divergent thinking.

Disadvantages of Essay Tests:

Essay tests have some serious flaws:

i) They are difficult to score:

While they are easier to score, they are difficult to score objectively.

ii) They measure limited knowledge:

A multiple choice test with greater number of items can measure wider area

of knowledge than does an extended essay which measures limited aspects of knowledge.

iii) They are time-consuming:

They are time-consuming since students spend much time answering only

one extended-essay question and the teachers spend many hours in reading

lengthy essays.