essay on examination is a true test of one's ability

Are Examinations a Fair Way of Testing Our Knowledge?

Many students dislike exams and children of all ages seem to have a diet of more and more exams that they have to take. Coursework is being discredited as a way of demonstrating knowledge as it is becoming easier to plagiarise or even buy coursework over the internet. This leaves exams as the only obvious choice, but do they accurately & fairly test students’ knowledge?

All the Yes points:

A formal system needs to be in place., this s a student point of view, all the no points:, students can cheat in exams, the right discipline, the fact remains the truth because, flawed tests can defeat a good student, there are too many flaws, examinations do not show if someone has truly acquired certain knowledge., the microscopic and responsive nature of examining does not reflect how we use intelligence and knowledge in the real world., exams test memory more than analysis, creativity, or real understanding., coursework is a much more genuine assessment of a candidate, the pressure attached to a’levels and gcses is huge and causes many problems., as well as causing personal problems, pressure can lead many bright students to under-perform., examination results depend on the opinion of the individual examiner., yes because….

Academic competence and intelligence are not straightforward to measure and no method will fully capture the scope of a student’s ability, but the fact remains that we need at least some formal system, otherwise the academic system will not work. We need divisions between ability levels and the amount of experience and knowledge students actually possess, otherwise students will be in environments unsuited to them and won’t be able to learn properly. There is no other way to divide them than by testing them in a fair and impartial manner. Exams are good at this because they are not vague – they have clear, measurable guidelines.

No because…

Guidelines are neither clear nor measurable. Students are duped into believing their innate abilities and potential are being tested whilst they are largely being tested on test-taking ability, confidence and pushiness. What this system encourages is practicing past papers in the hopes of mastering tests and not the subject. Tests do not encourage the pursuit of knowledge so much as the pursuit of great grades. Education should free the mind not restrict it to guidelines that are NOT transparent (As the pandemic of misunderstood Andagogy(opposite of pedagogy) keeps teachers from spoon-feeding or spelling things out). Intellectual exploration is impeded with constant pulls towards mastering guess work and memorising ‘standard’ methods of answering ‘repeated types’ of questions that were originally set to test a student’s response to unfamiliar problems. Subjective/qualitative papers with essay questions are not as easy to measure as mathematics or other quantitative papers. There are times when different examiners grade the same paper by the same student/pupil very differently. Marks on tests are frequently altered on students’ coercion or a teacher/examiner’s admittance of human error on his/her part. Pushier/convincing students can push examiners/tutors into raising their grades and exercise this talent frequently. Tests simply require students to cram when studying, and after the test is taken, the information studied is almost immediately forgotten, so the purpose of the test in the first place is gone.

So,first we have to consider about our world population…..ipsofacto (infact) our country’s population….that would have answered all your questions…if not so continue reading this passage considering the population and the great competition developed at present because of that population….we have to prove ourself through some efficient method even in order to get a job…..and of course we don’t have any efficient method for that purpose except examination……. lack of examinations may …i’m sorry… will definitely cause some unsuited persons to get unsuited jobs and which ‘ll lead to improper development and will affect the country’s development hence to select the good environment for the students according to their ability examinations are must…and im toooo suffering with those stuffs guysssssssssssss………

The problem with examination for the purpose of proving oursleves or comparing our resulits to others is that exams are not required for such things. take for example someone who is planning to become a doctor or a surgeon. it may be helpfull to exam them and test them to see if they can memorise a medical text book from cover to cover but does this prepare them for the more pratical aspects of being a doctor such as conversing with paitents to name but one. even the aspects which are tested in an exam format (body parts/systems, diseases and injuries) could be made into a more pratical test which invloes more than just writing and memory skills. By making exams the main way of catagorising us we decide that in the real world memory and test taking are more important than the pratical aspects of each profession.

Even though exams are closely monitored and there are severe penalties if they are found cheating, students can still sneak information into exams. Exam papers can even be stolen or forged on their way to and from examination centers. Computers that contain the grades before they are formally released can be hacked into or go wrong on their own. It is more difficult to monitor students who don’t take their exams in the main examination room or at the same date and time as the regular exams, because of disability adjustments or resits, and we can’t do away with these. If exams are supposed to be a way to prevent cheating, they aren’t infallible by any means. I never said the method had to be perfect, I said a system that is being replaced because it is vulnerable to cheating shouldn’t be replaced by another system that is vulnerable to cheating. You wouldn’t replace a faulty computer with another faulty computer.

We are mortal: we are all going to die: does that mean we should all kill ourselves and never attempt to prolong and improve our lives? no it does not The system of testing exists for a purpose, which it may not serve ‘perfectly’ but serves to an extent. Tests can be improved and cheating can be reduced. Tests with certain test-takers cheating, are better than no tests at all. You might as well not sell anything because some people steal. It is unfair that students who do not cheat and vye for a fair assessment of their abilities and standing on a subject, should be deprived of being tested because of a few bad eggs. There is a difference between ‘improvement’ and replacement. Testing/exams can not be replaced the conditions in which they proceed are different for different exam centers and different students as you point out that doesn’t mean testing should be chucked altogether. efforts can be made to make stringent and similar test-taking conditions( a faulty computer can be fixed that won’t stop it from gettting faulty again) for everyone everywhere however to expect perfect results is irrational. It is not tests themselves that allow cheating it is the conditions in which they are conducted. You cannot say that a T.V lying on the road then getting stolen, is responsible for getting robbed. It is the condition(sitting on the road, entirely not the T.V’s fault) that leads to the crime/theft.

Examinations are, at times, good and necessary ways of testing a student’s ability to commit information to memory, to work under pressure and to find out what they know. However, examinations must not become regular. Regular examinations result in students working toward exams and exams only. They do not work in order to learn. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is rid of in a system where examinations reign supreme. It becomes knowledge for the sake of passing the class, receiving an “A” etc. Whilst coursework may easily be cheated on, it is ridiculous to suggest that the only other way of testing a student’s abilities and knowledge is through examination. Class discussions and debates are, with active class participation, one of the most effective ways of learning and retaining information. Through being forced to better one’s own views and opinions, theories and answers, the student gains a deeper insight into their own arguments, becomes better at discussing their views, and the class benefits from listening to these views and thinking about how the views of their peers compare to those of their own. Through this they can alter their own opinions or form new ones. Class participation is a necessary requirement seeing as how even if one person refuses to engage in the discussion, their own ideas are never put to the test of both the peers and their teacher, and so receive no benefit for their own beliefs, and the class also receives no benefit from that particular student. And this is just one student! Full class participation is an absolute requirement. How do we accurately test students? We test them through what they are best at and what they are happiest with through immediate student and teacher feedback during and after classes. Weekly or monthly the parents/guardians of those students will receive report cards, showing which subjects their son/daughter is best at, and which they need the most help with. It will also be noted which classes are that child’s favourite. Parents and students must also be able to suggest ways in which their classes could be made better, so long as the suggestions are realistic, reasonable and that they contribute to the learning environment in such a way that the students learn more and at no cost to student/teacher and student/student relationships. For example, bullying must not become more common as a result of changes to the class. Examinations should appear annually, but no more than that. If there are discrepancies between one’s examination and one’s school work, then this must be investigated, as it would be within the current system now. However, discrepencies are far less likely within this proposed framework, as all the progress and learning goes on during school hours and under the supervision and encouragement of the teacher. (This does not mean to say that kids should not be assigned homework, but the homework itself would be judged on how well the student can prove that they did it i.e., through class discussions the next day).

Discussions and debates are useless as a measure of your academic performance if you just can’t speak confidently in real time. What do you do in cases where your favorite subject isn’t the subject you perform best in? it might seem obvious that people will perform best in subjects they are enthusiastic in and try the hardest in because they like it, but my grades were almost universally best in subjects i hated – because i tried my hardest to ‘get them over and done with’ so i didn’t have to think about them any more, which people mistook for efficiency, and i would write completely mechanically and impartially about them, which made me look more disciplined, especially when the subject was maths and it mostly was mechanical. the subjects i liked were the ones i was more relaxed in and quite often would assume beforehand that I would do well in, causing me to make less effort. But how can you determine whether someone has absorbed information or attained knowledge and can eloquently reproduce it under pressure whilst being timed, without him or her being tested??

The fact remains the truth because EXAMINATION IS NOT THE TRUE TEST OF KNOWLEDGE . Its every where , Instances where after exams student forget most if not all they’ve learnt during the session all because they were reading only to pass the exams and nothing more . this is becoming more and more common among those who just want to find an easy way out to study where student cram solutions to past questions just to pass the exam…..And the exams has not help in anyway either since its has always been repetition of past questions or modification of past question. I really don’t know what to call this but in most cases the teacher will always want you to give them what they give , what am saying is that they want you to write it the way they taught you in the class, you know, I really don’t know what this thing called examination is ? . I will give you an instance , back then when I was in school ,….we had the subject in physics which was very wide and we did a lot of examples and class work , due to the complexity of the course we had to read both text books and all necessary materials we could lay our hands on ….during the exams the questions where just examples we did in the class , and you wont believe it many student failed . What am I saying ….this thing called examination which test how best you can cram and how lucky you could be ? ….what I mean by that is , there are instances where you will go to an exams and your area of concentration will not even be part of the exams ,…not that you don’t know it or you’ve not read but the aspect of the course where you are good is not on the exams …..so you see there are a lot to this examination of a thing….i think there should be a better way of testing students knowledge about what they’ve learned and how deep they understand it …..and not just making them cram past questions and answers..

“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.” – Neil Gaiman Given all that you’ve said the absence of exams/tests would ipso facto, be an even worse assessment of knowledge, potential and/or ability. Since there is no alternative measure that if it were given the importance given to formal testing would/does not fail in all the areas that exams have failed. It is important to know how people perform under pressure since work (and everything else that exams prepare and assess you for) is generally thought to be very stressing. It’s not just that we have to give exams so that we can pass, but with exams we revise what we read and when we learn all these things they settle in our mind.

I have never been comfortable with a very good grade (an A) or a very bad grade (an F) I may have received as a result of taking a test. Grades on either extreme often leave me wondering if I’ve learned anything at all. One thing I have learned recently, as a result of failing miserably on a test, is that the test itself can be flawed. A little research reveals that the skills required to develop a fair, meaningful and comprehensive test, regardless of the subject matter, are considerable. Imagine for example, a mid-term exam, in this case applied mathematics, with an extremely narrow subject bandwidth, as compared with the overall course material, and limited to essentially three questions, two of which are worth 40 points each with the third worth 20 points. None were multiple choice or matching type questions. Miss just one of the 40 point questions and you get an F! To receive an A required a correct answer on 100% of the material! What does a test like this say, to me or the instructor, about what I’ve really learned in this class? Not much!

Likes try to take a case in point, of mathematics class which one student takes online versus another who takes in class. Now the student in class may actually be a harder worker, smarter, an overall better student but he is challenged to the fact, that he must take the same exam as the online student, who is able to use his notes, book, online resources. So does the exam treat the student’s fairly? Lets look at another fact of exams, in a generalization most classes consists of 3-4 exams, each exam covering 2-3 chapters, then a compressive final covering all chapters and of course homework. Most classes go by weighted scores, such that your exams consists of 50% of grade, your final 30% of grade, and your homework 20%. Student’s put emphasis on these weighted scores, by creating priorities such that, homework is considered the bottom of the food chain. Why work on homework, when the tests are more important? When the scary realization is that homework is the tool, that provides the best way to create lasting knowledge. How do you get better at a math theory? You constantly use that math theory on dozens of problems over and over again, such as you would find on homework. However on the flip-side on a test, you memorize a theory, use it once, and forget about it. So exams fails to create lasting knowledge, which is the whole point of classes. My final point, doesn’t necessarily point the flaw in examination but the flaw in the examineer. We’ve all had times, where a teacher would vaguely touch on subject, yet the subject becomes a big part of the test. Some teachers fail to recognize the flaws in their teaching method, as most teaching methods consists of trying to create ever lasting knowledge which takes a long time, and repetition. When tests mock the fact of this by exploiting student’s who are good at the skill of learn and forget, studying whats going to be on the test, rather than knowledge provided by the teacher, which sometimes isn’t even on the exam. To finish, I’d like to suggest alternatives tests that would better replace traditional exams. The best I feel would be oral exams, a one on one talk with the examiner as he goes through different questions, would eliminate exams problems that have weird worded question or ask vague questions, and then the examiner could full evaluate the person knowledge and ability use set knowledge in “test” sort of situation. Take home tests, are another, but cheating is an increased chance, so an implement of different tests would have to be used. The student benefits from this, for being forced to research again the knowledge that he or she has probably lost over the course. Which I think should be the true reason for a final test, a refresher on what you’ve learned. Also the final suggestion would be to lose the weighted score of tests, maybe making homework 50% of grade, 3-4 tests 7-10%, and the final test 20%, that way it gets rid of the one thought knowledge test. Because even a student who is copying answers, as long as he copies the method, he is learning something, such the same as a kid who copies theories from a book. Writing or retyping is effective way to create knowledge.

Candidates can score high on an examination by revising hard beforehand, only to forget it immediately afterwards. Surprise examinations are perhaps more effective in showing the candidate’s knowledge.

A surprise exam still sounds like an exam to me. One major question is are there any other ways of testing our knowledge that do not invole some kind of examination? You have practical testing or testing while on the job but that is really just an exam by another name.

In the world of work, in the world of relationships, in the world of family life, relaxation, further academic study, in all these worlds, one requires the ability not just to learn facts and hold understanding of certain intellectual systems in your head, but to make decisions, come up with ideas about how you want to proceed in using any of these things. You need a much more interactive relationship with the world than a simple ‘it exists and I know certain things about it’. Perhaps this aspect of growing up is best provided elsewhere, such as the playground, where certain survival instincts and behavioural tactics are learned or beaten into you, but it seems incredible to me that the educational system couldn’t go some way towards alleviating the disparity between how we are examined in the exam hall and how we come to use what we have learned in wider life.

Exams test memory more than analysis, creativity, or real understanding. If you have a good memory you can get away with doing very little work throughout the course and still get very good grades.

Things such as open book exams, viva voces, and questions which ask you to evaluate information are not testing merely memory, but your ability to apply your knowledge.

Coursework is a much more genuine assessment of a candidate because it takes into account research, understanding of the issues and ability to express oneself, not just ability to answer a question in a very limited period of time.

Coursework is valuable but should be used in conjunction with exams. A student might answer a question very well given time and help from teachers, family and textbooks, but then be unable to apply what they have learned to another question coming from a different angle.

The pressure attached to A’levels and GCSEs is huge and causes many problems. Some students have breakdowns and, in extreme cases, attempt suicide because they cannot handle the pressure, especially with university places relying on grades.

Coursework can involve a lot of pressure as well, especially with the meeting of deadlines. Schools should, and do, teach pupils about relaxation and stress-management for both exams and coursework.

As well as causing personal problems, pressure can lead many bright students to under-perform. Exams test your ability to keep your cool more than they test your intelligence.

Pressure is a fact of life and children must be prepared for it. Pressure only increases at university and in the workplace and we must teach children how to perform well in these conditions rather than protect them from them.

Examination results depend on the opinion of the individual examiner. The same paper marked by two different examiners could get completely different results. This is exacerbated by the short time that examiners spend marking a paper.

Coursework must also be marked by individuals, so the same criticism applies. It is not significant however, as moderation and examiners meetings ensure that papers are marked to the same standards.

Who is the author of this site.

From Kindergarten we have learned that completing a task correctly might get us a gold star, or our names on the “honor list’. We have been taught or trained that if we are able to demonstrate back information we will be rewarded. Earlier in childhood education with the gold star, and later in adulthood with the “good” job. So, in essence, examinations are just a way of testing how good we are at following instructions to get that reward. Exams do not give an accurate summary of knowledge application

The answer is simple. Exams are not a fair way of testing your knowledge. Grades only tell what you did in the paper. Exams can never be flawless and its best to judge students based on their overall skills seen throughout a period of two to three years instead of forcing them to work under a very specific paper pattern. Exams are little more than modern slavery.

The fact is that if you are always tested, you’ll get nervous and anxious as soon as you’re given work to do and devellop medical conditions after a while

students should not only be tested on how well they do in their exams but also they should be marked on presentations and projects as it gives them the opportunity to explain in their own words what they have learnt and then apply it.:)

Honestly, I think this is a very good system, each subject should have a balance of presentations and exams. But I should also add this, there should also be an option for students who are dissatisfied with their results to present their understanding of their subject once again to see whether they actually understood the concepts but didn’t do well because of the system. No system is perfect, which is why I feel this is a good idea.

a student who works hard, is fully antentive in class, solving problems independently and who has a regular study schedule will not face any problem in answering the question paper. It does not matter too much that wheather the student is poor or not it depends on the students hard work. Exams identify in which field will the student exel and this simplify the career choice. Only the students who want to exel in life will work hard enough

I disagree. There are times when the teacher fails to teach the proper format and how to answer questions. A person who understands the concepts and know how to apply them very well is useless when in a rigid formal system that discourages creativity and exchanges self expression of their good understanding of the course with formal rigid structures. I don’t fail, but I have done badly in exams with high formal structures in university, one of the few assignnrs I did well was one that had absolutely no structure, I was free to express my understanding of the subject.

The way I see it, as long as the student is able To express his understanding in a clear and concise manner, it does not matter if it does not follow the exact format of the written examination.

test taking skills are also needed for good scores. If we don’t know test taking skills, then we can’t get a high score, so it is not a good way to test our knowledge. what if a student is too poor to learn these skills? Then they can’t get a high score even though they study harder than students who know a lot of testing skills. it is not his/her fault that their family is poor.

Therefore, examinations are not a fair way of testing our knowledge.

Are exams a true test of one?s ability?

15 mai 2007

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Indeed examinations are regarded by the teachers and other prominent intellectuals as a test of merit .Students prepare for the examinations, days and months in advance. The day of the examination is always awaited with a mixed feeling. There is a fear of facing a tough paper and there is also a sense of relief to know that, once the papers are over, there can be enough time to play and enjoy. Examinations are a bug-bear. They are like electric shocks for most students.

Children have all sorts of nightmares before the preparation of an examination. They priviledge cramming. Unintelligent cramming leads to stunting of the thinking power. They are a farce. The examiners themselves are not sure how to mark the papers.The outstanding advantage of examinations is that the teacher and student tend to be industrious. Examinations inspire them to work hard and score maximum marks in each subject. The teacher and students consider examinations as their only goal. They even compete with other classes.

This means that without examinations, teachers and students would tend to become idle. After the result, the meritorious student is easily known by the teacher or principal. Students are not to be found in cinema houses, restaurants and other places of entertainment during examination days. If there were no examinations, the merits of various students could not be judged, nor would the majority of students take any interest as it is only the fear of examinations that makes students work. They know that if they keep on neglecting books, they will be exposed on examination days.

Now do examinations really test an individual? A student may memorize certain portions of the text and if a question is set from the portions he has prepared, he will no doubt secure good marks, while another student, brighter and more intelligent than the first, may not show good results because he did not especially prepare the questions which were set in the examination. A student may play football during the whole academic year and yet get through the examination. Another student may work hard throughout the year but unfortunately fall ill during the examination days and be thus declared unsuccessful. Is it justice? Is it fair play? It is a mockery. Papers of a lucky candidate may go to a lenient examiner, while bad luck may take yours to a stiff one. A marginal case may pass in the hands of one examiner and fail in another?s. It is a lottery. A lucky one may draw a prize ticket. while an unlucky one may draw blank. The mood of an examiner counts. If he has fallen out with his short-tempered wife, he may fail you.

An examiner, who has just received news of his promotion to class one, would like to share his good luck with his examinees. Are then again examinations a true test of one?s ability? When they come even the gayest of them forget all play and turn to worshippers at the altar of books day and night. This gives one some idea of the terror they strike into the heart of the poor examinees. Examinations are a plague. They are blood-suckers. Their after effects are pale cheeks and sunken eyes, grey hair, sleepless nights, physical and mental disorders.

A number of young men go mad year after year as a result of these examinations. Many more commit suicide for or after failing in them. How said: How deplorable? Most educationists now agree that a simple crucial examination is certainly no test of ability; they insist upon a series of practical tests of knowledge and intelligence over a period of two or three years .The results of all these tests, they say, should be taken into account when judging a student?s ability.

On the whole, it may be said that good students do not usually show bad results and that negligent students do not generally pass. They kill all originality. They play with the health and lives of the student. Examinations are a game of chance and skill.

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Article contents

Authentic assessment.

• Kim H. Koh Kim H. Koh Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.22
• Published online: 27 February 2017

Authentic tasks replicate real-world challenges and standards of performance that experts or professionals typically face in the field. The term “authentic assessment” was first coined by Grant Wiggins in K‒12 educational contexts. Authentic assessment is an effective measure of intellectual achievement or ability because it requires students to demonstrate their deep understanding, higher-order thinking, and complex problem solving through the performance of exemplary tasks. Hence authentic assessment can serve as a powerful tool for assessing students’ 21st-century competencies in the context of global educational reforms. The review begins with a detailed explanation of the concept of authentic assessment. There is a substantial body of literature focusing on the definitions of authentic assessment. However, only those that are original and relevant to educational contexts are included.. Some of the criteria for authentic assessment defined by the authors overlap with each other, but their definitions are consistent. A comparison of authentic assessment and conventional assessment reveals that different purposes are served, as evidenced by the nature of the assessment and item response format. Examples of both types of assessments are included. Three major themes are examined within authentic assessment research in educational contexts: authentic assessment in educational or school reforms, teacher professional learning and development in authentic assessment, and authentic assessment as tools or methods used in a variety of subjects or disciplines in K‒12 schooling and in higher education institutions. Among these three themes, most studies were focused on the role of authentic assessment in educational or school reforms. Future research should focus on building teachers’ capacity in authentic assessment and assessment for learning through a critical inquiry approach in school-based professional learning communities or in teacher education programs. To enable the power of authentic assessment to unfold in the classrooms of the 21st century, it is essential that teachers are not only assessment literate but also competent in designing and using authentic assessments to support student learning and mastery of the 21st-century competencies.

• authentic assessment
• authentic tasks
• criteria for authenticity
• 21st-century competencies

Introduction

The term “authentic assessment” was first coined in 1989 by Grant Wiggins in K‒12 educational contexts. According to Wiggins ( 1989 , p. 703), authentic assessment is “a true test” of intellectual achievement or ability because it requires students to demonstrate their deep understanding, higher-order thinking, and complex problem solving through the performance of exemplary tasks. Authentic tasks replicate real-world challenges and “standards of performance” that experts or professionals (e.g., mathematicians, scientists, writers, doctors, teachers, or designers) typically face in the field (Wiggins, 1989 , p. 703). For instance, authentic tasks in mathematics need to elicit the kind of thinking and reasoning used by mathematicians when they solve problems.

In the assessment literature, some authors have argued that the term “authentic” was first introduced by Archbald and Newmann ( 1988 ) in the context of learning and assessment (Cumming & Maxwell, 1999 ; Palm, 2008 ). However, the term “authentic” in Archbald and Newmann ( 1988 ) was associated with achievement rather than assessment. A few years later, Newmann and Archbald ( 1992 ) provided a detailed explanation of authentic achievement. Cumming and Maxwell ( 1999 ) have aptly pointed out that authentic assessment and authentic achievement are interrelated, as it is important to identify the desired student learning outcomes and realign the methods of assessment to them. Authentic assessment should be rooted in authentic achievement to ensure a close alignment between assessment tasks and desired learning outcomes. This alignment is of paramount importance in the worldwide climate of curriculum and assessment reform, which places greater emphasis on the development of students’ 21st-century competencies—including critical and creative thinking, complex problem solving, effective communication, collaboration, self-directed and lifelong learning, responsible citizenship, and information technological literacy, just to name a few.

In addition to K‒12 education, “authentic assessment” was further defined by Gulikers, Bastiaens, and Kirschner ( 2004 ) in the context of professional and vocational training that incorporates competence-based curricula and assessments. To better prepare students for their future workplace, there is a need for assessment tasks used in professional and vocational education to resemble the tasks students will encounter in their future professional practice. Authentic assessments in competence-based education should create opportunities for students to integrate learning and working in practice, which results in students’ mastery of professional skills needed in their future workplace.

Authentic assessment has played a pivotal role in driving curricular and instructional changes in the context of global educational reforms. Since the 1990s, teacher education and professional development programs in many education systems around the globe have focused on the development of assessment literacy for teachers and teacher candidates which encompasses teacher competence in the design, adaptation, and use of authentic assessment tasks or performance assessment tasks to engage students in in-depth learning of subject matter and to promote their mastery of the 21st-century competencies (e.g., Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000 ; Koh, 2011a , 2011b , 2014 ; Shepard et al., 2005 ; Webb, 2009 ). Although many of the 21st-century competencies are not new, they have become increasingly in demand in colleges and workplaces that have shifted from lower-level cognitive and routine manual tasks to higher-level analytic and interactive tasks (e.g., collaborative problem solving) (Darling Hammond & Adamson, 2010 ). The amount of new information is increasing at an exponential rate due to the advancement of digital technology. Hence, rote learning and regurgitation of facts or procedures are no longer suitable in contemporary educational contexts. Rather, students are expected to be able to find, organize, interpret, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and apply new information or knowledge to solve non-routine problems.

Students’ mastery of the essential 21st-century competencies will enable them to succeed in colleges, to thrive in a fast-changing global economy, and to live meaningfully in a complex, technological connected world. According to Darling-Hammond and Adamson ( 2010 ), the role of performance assessment is critical in helping both teachers and students to achieve the 21st-century standards of assessment and learning. Many authors in extant research have used “performance assessment” and “authentic assessment” interchangeably (e.g., Arter, 1999 ; Darling-Hammond & Adamson, 2010 ). Some authors have distinguished between performance assessment and authentic assessment (Meyer, 1992 ; Palm, 2008 ; Wiggins, 1989 ). Thorough review of the literature suggests that there is a need to differentiate performance assessment from authentic assessment.

All authentic assessments are performance assessments because they require students to construct extended responses, to perform on something, or to produce a product. Both process and product matter to authentic assessments, and hence formative assessment—such as open questioning, descriptive feedback, self- and peer assessments—can be easily incorporated into authentic assessments. In other words, the process is as important as the product. As such, authentic assessments also capture students’ dispositions such as positive habits of mind, growth mindset, persistence in solving complex problems, resilience and grit, and self-directed learning. The use of scoring criteria and human judgments are two of the essential components of authentic assessments (Wiggins, 1989 ).

Although all performance assessments include constructed responses or performances on open-ended tasks, not all performance assessments are authentic. As Arter ( 1999 ) pointed out, the two essential components of a performance assessment include tasks and criteria. This suggests that the line between performance assessment and authentic assessment is thin. Hence, the authenticity of a performance assessment or performance-based tasks is best to be determined by Gulikers et al.’s ( 2004 ) five dimensions of authenticity; Koh and Luke’s ( 2009 ) criteria for authentic intellectual quality; Newmann, Marks, and Gamoran ( 1996 ) “intellectual quality” criteria; and Wiggins’s ( 1989 ) four key features of authentic assessment. The dimensional framework proposed by Gulikers et al. is appropriate for use with assessments in professional and vocational training contexts including higher education institutions, while Wiggins ( 1989 ), Newmann et al. ( 1996 ), and Koh and Luke ( 2009 ) are appropriate for use with assessments in K‒12 school contexts. The criteria for authentic intellectual quality by Koh and Luke ( 2009 ) have also been linked to the Singapore Classroom Coding Scheme, which was developed by Luke, Cazden, Lin, and Freebody ( 2005 ) to conduct classroom observations of teachers’ instructional practices. Some of the criteria for authentic intellectual quality were adapted from Newmann et al.’s ( 1996 ) authentic intellectual work, Lingard, Ladwig, Mills, Bahr, Chant, & Warry’s ( 2001 ) productive pedagogy and assessment, and the New South Wales model of quality teaching (Ladwig, 2009 ). Lingard et al. ( 2001 ) have used the term “rich tasks” instead of authentic tasks in the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study. According to the authors, rich tasks are open-ended tasks that enable students to connect their learning to real-world issues and problems.

In short, this section presents a detailed explanation of the concept of authentic assessment. The remaining sections of this article will include a comparison of authentic assessment and conventional assessment, criteria for authenticity in authentic assessment, authentic assessment research in educational contexts (research problems/questions and methods included), and future research in authentic assessment.

Authentic Assessment Versus Conventional Assessment

Authentic assessment serves as an alternative to conventional assessment. Conventional assessment is limited to standardized paper-and-pencil/pen tests, which emphasize objective measurement. Standardized tests employ closed-ended item formats such as true‒false, matching, or multiple choice. The use of these item formats is believed to increase efficiency of test administration, objectivity of scoring, reliability of test scores, and cost-effectiveness as machine scoring and large-scale administration of test items are possible. However, it is widely recognized that traditional standardized testing restricts the assessment of higher-order thinking skills and other essential 21st-century competencies due to the nature of the item format. From an objective measurement or psychometric perspective, rigorous and higher-level learning outcomes(e.g., critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, and extended communication) are too subjective to be tested. An overemphasis on objective measurement and closed-ended item formats has led to the testing of discrete bits of facts and procedures. As such, curriculum is fragmented and dumbed down as many of the desired learning outcomes are measured as atomized bits of knowledge and skills.

Standardized paper-and-pen tests are administered in uniform ways to ascertain student achievement for summative purposes (i.e., grading and reporting at the end of a unit or a semester, certification at the completion of a course). At the classroom level, standardized tests are typically used in summative assessment at the end of instruction. Assessment is seen to be detached from instruction. Large-scale administration of standardized paper-and-pen tests is often used for cross-national comparisons of student achievement. The use of standardized paper-and-pen tests on a large-scale basis is predominant in state/provincial assessments and international assessments. Examples of state/provincial assessments are the Foundation Skills Assessments (FSA) in British Columbia, Canada; the Provincial Achievement Tests (PAT) in Alberta, Canada; and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the United States. International assessments include the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS); the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS); and the Program in International Student Assessment (PISA). The closed-ended item response format in standardized tests tends to encourage students to fill in the bubbles or provide short answers using their rote memorization of discrete facts and procedures. Students are either rewarded or punished depending on whether they get that one answer right according to the answer keys or marking schemes. Such a testing format is aligned with the behaviorist learning theory that promotes the use of rewards to reinforce positive behaviors and of sanctions to remove negative behaviors.

Both summative and international assessments are high stakes because student achievement data derived from these assessments are used for making important decisions or policies, which may lead to unintended consequences for students, teachers, or school administrators. Oftentimes, teacher job performance is evaluated based on student performance on high-stakes assessments. In many high-performative education systems, teachers are held accountable by policy makers, parents, and school administrators for students’ performance. Such a high accountability demand has led to teachers’ tendency to teach to the content and format of state/provincial, national, or international assessments. For example, Koh and Luke’s ( 2009 ) large-scale empirical study of the quality of teachers’ assessment tasks in Singapore, one of the high-performative education systems in the world, has shown that worksheets and summative tests were two of the most commonly used assessment methods in the teaching of core subject areas such as English, mathematics, and science at both elementary and secondary levels. Teachers’ instructional practices were driven by preparing students for high-stakes examinations. As a result, the intended curriculum was reduced to a drill-and-practice of decontextualized factual and procedural knowledge.

Authentic assessments are characterized by open-ended tasks that require students to construct extended responses, to perform an act, or to produce a product in a real-world context—or a context that mimics the real world. Examples of authentic assessments include projects, portfolios, writing an article for newsletter or newspaper, performing a dance or drama, designing a digital artifact, creating a poster for science fair, debates, and oral presentations. According to Wiggins ( 1989 ), authentic tasks must “involve students in the actual challenges, standards, and habits needed for success in the academic disciplines or in the workplace” (p. 706). In other words, authentic tasks need to be designed to replicate the authentic intellectual challenges and standards facing experts or professionals in the field. Such assessment tasks are deemed able to engage and motivate learners when they perceive the relevance of the tasks to the real world or when they find that a completion of the tasks is meaningful for their learning.

The purpose of authentic assessment is to provide students with ample opportunity to engage in authentic tasks so as to develop, use, and extend their knowledge, higher-order thinking, and other 21st-century competencies. Authentic tasks are often performance-based and include complex and ill-structured problems that are well aligned with the rigorous and higher-order learning objectives in a reformed vision of curriculum (Shepard, 2000 ). Most professional challenges in the current and future workplace require individuals to strike a balance between individual and group achievement (Wiggins, 1989 ). The nature of authentic tasks enables students to learn how to achieve such a balance by engaging in independent learning of possible solutions and by collaborating with peers in a socially supportive learning environment over an extended period of time. As such, authentic tasks also support problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and other learner-centered pedagogical approaches. Productive discourse or extended communication in a social context is important in the process of arriving at solutions to problems. Hence students are able to “experience what it is like to do tasks in workplace and other real-life contexts” (Wiggins, 1998 , p. 24). John Dewey, a prominent philosopher of education, underscored the importance of experience in education by arguing that learners cannot know something without directly experiencing it. Dewey inspired the use of the project method in his laboratory school at the University of Chicago from 1896 to 1904 . The project method enabled children to reflect and examine critically at their prior beliefs or preexisting knowledge in the light of new experiences. Children were expected to learn content knowledge and procedural skills in a context that was relevant to their real-world lives. The context usually entails a complex, real-life problem or authentic project, with many levels of embedded problems and solutions. The project method was further defined as a “hearty purposeful act” by Kilpatrick ( 1918 , p. 320) in his essay “The Project Method,” which became known worldwide.

Authentic tasks assess not only students’ authentic performance or work, but also their dispositions such as persistence in solving messy and complex problems, positive habits of mind, growth mindset, resilience and grit, and self-directed learning. Given that the use of scoring rubrics is a key component of authentic assessment, it enables the provision of descriptive feedback, self- and peer assessment using criteria and standards as in the form of holistic or analytic rubrics. It is important that students receive timely and formative feedback from the teacher and/or peers so that they are able to use the feedback to improve the quality of their performance or work. Such a formative assessment or assessment for learning practice has long been advocated in key assessment literature that urges teachers to use classroom assessment to support student learning or to promote a learner-centered classroom culture (e.g., Black & Wiliam, 1998 ; Shepard, 2000 ). From a social-constructivist learning approach (Shepard, 2000 ), the opportunities for productive discourse or dialogue in the process of collaborating with peers and of giving/receiving peer feedback in completing authentic tasks underscore the importance of co-construction of knowledge and meaning-making through socially supported interactions.

Since the 1990s, the social-constructivist learning theory has played a key role in the curriculum and assessment reform movement. The social-constructivist learning theory was named an emergent constructivist paradigm in Shepard’s ( 2000 ) reconceptualization of classroom assessment practice for the 21st century . The emergent constructivist paradigm was characterized by the shared principles of a reformed vision of curriculum, cognitive and constructivist/social-constructivist learning theories, and classroom assessment. The shared principles emphasize that all students can learn, and thus they must be given an equal opportunity to be exposed to intellectually challenging subject matter and assessment tasks that are aimed at developing their higher-order thinking, problem solving, and dispositions. The principles of classroom assessment in Shepard’s ( 2000 ) emergent constructivist paradigm are similar to those that characterize authentic assessment.

Criteria for Authenticity in Authentic Assessment

There is a substantial curriculum and assessment literature focusing on the features or characteristics of authentic assessment. The use of “features” and “characteristics” seems to suggest that an assessment or a task can be quantifiable for its authenticity. I prefer to use the term “criteria” to determine and describe the degree of authenticity of an assessment or a task. This section includes a review of the relevant literature on the criteria of authentic assessment.

According to Wiggins ( 1989 , 1998 ), assessment is central to learning and must be linked to real-world demands. In these articles, some of the criteria for authentic assessment are overlapping. They can be summarized into eight criteria:

First , authentic assessment “is realistic” (Wiggins, 1998 , p. 22). This means that the authentic task or tasks must replicate how a student’s knowledge, skills, and/or dispositions are assessed in a real-world context. In other words, the authentic task or tasks should replicate or simulate the real-world contexts in which adults are assessed in the workplace, in social life, and in personal life. This enables students to experience what it is like to work or perform in real-life contexts, which are often messy, ambiguous, and unpredictable. Such a “learning by doing” experience is in line with Dewey’s experiential education.

Second , the authentic task or tasks require students to make good judgments and be creative and innovative in solving complex and non-routine problems or performing a task in new situations. This enables the assessment of transferable skills to new tasks or contexts. In addition, students need to be competent and confident in using a repertoire of knowledge, skills, and dispositions to tackle and complete authentic tasks that are intellectually challenging. Hence, authentic tasks serve as an effective tool for assessing students’ demonstrations of critical thinking, complex problem solving, and creativity and innovation. These are some of the essential 21st-century competencies.

Third , an authentic assessment or task enables students to deeply engage in the subject or discipline through critical thinking and inquiry. Instead of rote learning and reproduction of facts and procedures, students need to be able to think, act, and communicate like experts in the subject or discipline. This is akin to Shulman’s ( 2005 ) signature pedagogies.

Fourth , in authentic assessment, students are given opportunities to rehearse, practice, look for useful resources, and receive timely quality feedback so as to improve the quality of performance or product. Students also need to present their work publicly and be given the opportunity to defend it. This suggests that assessment for learning or formative assessment practice can be easily incorporated into authentic assessment.

Fifth , authentic tasks look for multiple evidences of student performance over time and the reasons or explanations behind the success and failure of a performance. In addition, both reliability and validity of judgment about complex performance depend upon multiple evidences gained over many performances across multiple occasions. To ensure fairness and equity, the teacher must be provided with informative data of students’ strengths and weaknesses at the end of each assessment. This will ensure that the teacher’s feedback is aimed at helping all students to make progress toward the standards.

Sixth , a multifaceted scoring system is used, and scoring criteria must be transparent. Sharing of scoring criteria explicitly with students will enable them to understand and internalize the criteria of success.

Seventh , student self-assessment must play a pivotal role in authentic assessment.

Finally , the reliability or defensibility of teachers’ professional judgment or scoring of student performance or work is achieved through social moderation, in which teachers of the same subjects gather to set criteria and standards for scoring, and to compare their scores (Klenowski & Wyatt-Smith, 2010 ).

Authentic achievement rather than authentic assessment is used in Newmann and Archbald ( 1992 ). They identify three criteria or standards for authentic achievement, namely, construction of knowledge , disciplined inquiry , and value beyond school . In their later work, Newmann et al. ( 1996 ) and Newmann, Bryk, and Nagaoka ( 2001 ) have used the term “criteria for authentic intellectual work” instead of “standards for authentic achievement.” Definitions of the three criteria for authentic achievement are as follows:

Construction of Knowledge

This criterion clearly indicates that students need to engage in construction or production of knowledge instead of reproduction of knowledge. Construction of knowledge is expressed in written and oral discourse. Examples of construction of knowledge are writing an article for a newsletter, performing a musical piece of work, creating a poster for a science fair, completing a group project, and designing a digital portfolio. All of these authentic assessments require students to engage in higher-order thinking, problem solving, communication, and collaboration. At the same time, students also need to present and defend their work in public.

Disciplined Inquiry

This criterion suggests that students need to be actively involved in critical inquiry within academic subjects or professional disciplines. Disciplined inquiry consists of three main components: prior knowledge base , in-depth understanding , and elaborated communication (Newmann et al., 2001 , p. 15). Students’ authentic performance is built on their prior knowledge in a subject or discipline. To engage in critical inquiry, students need to be able to tap into their prior knowledge base or the content knowledge that they have acquired before. The prior knowledge base or previously learned content knowledge includes facts, terminologies, vocabularies, concepts, theories, algorithms, procedures, and conventions. In-depth understanding refers to the ability to probe deeper into a problem and to organize, interpret, analyze, evaluate, and synthesize different types of knowledge or information that can be used to solve the problem. In-depth understanding helps students to engage actively in intellectual discourse or in making extended communication to explain their solutions to the problem. All experts or professionals in a subject or discipline are expected to use sophisticated forms of written and oral communication (i.e., elaborated communication) to carry out their work and to express their solutions to problems.

Value Beyond School

This criterion underscores the importance of having a value dimension in assessment tasks. To be intrinsically motivating for students, authentic tasks must have aesthetic, utilitarian, or personal value in the eyes of the learner.

Newmann et al. ( 1996 ) have pointed out that all three of these criteria are necessary for assessing the authenticity of student performance across grade levels and subject areas. They aptly stated that “construction of knowledge through disciplined inquiry to produce discourse, products, or performance that have value beyond success in school can serve as a standard of intellectual quality for assessing the authenticity of student performance” (Newmann et al., 1996 , p. 287). However, they also cautioned that not all instructional activities and assessment tasks will meet all the three criteria at all times.

Building upon the three criteria of authentic achievement, Newmann et al. ( 1996 ) have further developed seven criteria for assessing the intellectual quality of assessment tasks. The criteria are organization of information , consideration of alternatives , disciplinary content , disciplinary process , elaborated written communication , problem connected to the world , and audience beyond the school . Organization of information and consideration of alternatives reflect the importance of assessing students’ higher-order thinking or critical thinking in solving real-world problems. Disciplinary content emphasizes students’ ability to engage in critical inquiry into the ideas, theories, and perspectives central to their academic subject or professional discipline, while disciplinary process refers to the ability to use sound methods of inquiry, research, and communication, which is central to their academic subject or professional discipline. The use of elaborated written communication suggests that authentic tasks must involve students in using extended communication or sustained writing to express deep understanding and problem solving. The last two criteria, namely, problem connected to the world and audience beyond the school , indicate that assessment tasks need to expose students to the real-world issues or problems that they encounter in their daily lives or are likely to encounter in their future colleges, workplaces, and lives.

Gulikers et al. ( 2004 ) have proposed five criteria for defining authentic assessment in the context of professional and vocational training. Similar to Wiggins ( 1989 ) and Newmann and Archbald ( 1992 ), they contend that authenticity of assessment is a multifaceted concept. In determining the authenticity of an assessment, there is a need to take into account students’ perceptions of authenticity. In other words, students’ perceptions of the meaningfulness or relevance of the assessment is central to the determination of authenticity. The five criteria for authenticity or dimensions of authenticity are task , physical context , social context , assessment form , and criteria (Gulikers et al., 2004 ). The criteria are summarized below:

Using Messick’s ( 1994 ) question of authentic to what , Gulikers et al. ( 2004 ) have argued that the degree of authenticity of an assessment or a task is measured against a criterion situation. According to them, “a criterion situation reflects a real-life situation that students can be confronted with in their work placement or future professional life, which serves as a basis for designing an authentic assessment” (Gulikers et al., 2004 , p. 75). Therefore, an authentic assessment task should resemble the complexity of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions required in the criterion situation. And students should see the relevance or meaning of their performances on the authentic task to their future professions. The degree of authenticity of an assessment task can further be determined by whether the task requires multiple solutions and whether it is ill-structured and involves multiple disciplines.

Physical Context

In this criterion, three components are identified by Gulikers et al. ( 2004 ) to determine the degree of authenticity of an assessment: similarity to the professional work space (fidelity), availability of professional resources (methods/tools/materials, relevant or irrelevant information), and time given to complete the assessment task. Sufficient time for the completion of a task is important so that students’ thinking and acting will not be restricted by time constraints. Many professional activities in real life involve planning and execution of tasks over an extended period of time.

Social Context

The social processes of an authentic assessment must resemble those of a professional context. If the professional context or real-life situation requires collaboration with peers in solving problems, then the assessment should also involve students in collaboration and problem solving. However, it is important to note that if a professional context or real-life situation typically requires individual work then the assessment should not enforce collaboration. In other words, fidelity of the social processes in authentic assessment to those in a real-life situation is essential.

Assessment Form

The authenticity of assessment form is determined by the degree to which students are observed for their demonstrations of competences when performing on a task or creating a product. The observation will enable an inference about students’ competences in future professional contexts. The authenticity of the form of assessment also depends on the use of multiple tasks and indicators of learning. This is similar to Wiggins’s ( 1989 ) multifaceted scoring system, which emphasizes the use of multiple evidences of student performance. Many measurement and assessment experts also advocate for the use of multiple methods or tasks and multiple indicators of learning to ensure the accuracy, fairness, reliability, and validity of professional judgment about student performance (Messick, 1994 ; Shavelson, Baxter, & Gao, 1993 ; Wiggins, 1989 ). Hence, students’ professional competence should neither be assessed by a single task nor be judged based on a single performance.

Scoring criteria used in authentic assessment should be based on criteria used in professional practice or a real-life situation. In addition, scoring criteria should concern the development of relevant professional competence, which means that assessment of students’ learning progression is an important practice in the context of authentic assessment. Similar to Wiggins ( 1989 ), Gulikers et al. ( 2004 ) have argued that scoring criteria must be transparent and be shared explicitly with students to facilitate their learning. Hence, criterion-referenced rubrics should be used to judge students’ performance or work in authentic assessment.

Research in Authentic Assessment

Since the 1990s, research in authentic assessment was focused on three themes: authentic assessment in educational or school reforms, teacher professional learning or development in authentic assessment, and authentic assessment as tools or methods used in a variety of subjects or disciplines in K‒12 schooling and in higher education institutions. Among these three themes, most studies were focused on the role of authentic assessment in educational or school reforms. Due to space limitations, only key studies concentrating on authentic assessment in educational or school reforms have been reviewed.

Authentic Assessment in Educational or School Reforms

Since the late 1990s, authentic assessment has become a key lever for educational or school reforms that aim to develop students’ 21st-century competencies and prepare them for a global knowledge-based economy in a technologically connected world. In the curriculum frameworks of many education systems, there is a shift from low-level learning outcomes (e.g., factual knowledge and procedural skills) to higher-order learning outcomes (i.e., higher-order thinking, problem solving, and other essential 21st-century competencies). Likewise, teachers have been urged to move toward the use of social-constructivist, learner-centered pedagogy, authentic assessment, and formative assessment. Such changes have resulted in a substantial body of research focusing on teachers’ assessment practices and building teachers’ capacity in classroom assessment.

In the United States, Newmann and his associates (Newmann et al., 1996 ; Newmann et al., 2001 ) have conducted empirical studies to examine the impact of authentic pedagogy on student performance in Chicago public elementary schools. The focus of Newmann et al.’s ( 1996 ) study was to determine the relationship between authentic pedagogy and student performance in schools that used authentic pedagogy as a school reform initiative. Authentic pedagogy was comprised of authentic instruction and authentic assessment based on the criteria for authentic intellectual work. The study involved teachers who taught mathematics and social studies in three different grades ranging from elementary schools to high schools. Data included classroom observations of the teachers’ daily lessons and analyses of the assessment tasks and students’ written responses to the tasks that were embedded within the lessons. The data were analyzed using the criteria for authentic intellectual work. Student responses to the assessment tasks were used as evidence of student performance.

Most studies on educational or assessment reforms have often used standardized test scores as an indicator of improved student learning even when an educational innovation involves a new form of assessment. Student responses to tasks or student work samples are embedded within teachers’ instructional practices and hence serve as a better indicator of student performance. Newmann et al. ( 1996 ) found that authentic pedagogy was strongly associated with students’ authentic academic performance at all grade levels in both mathematics and social studies. Students who were exposed to assessment tasks with high intellectual demands demonstrated higher authentic performance than students who did not have the same exposure. In addition, the effects of authentic pedagogy were found to be equitably distributed among students of diverse social backgrounds, indicating that all students should have an equal access to the standards of intellectual quality. The findings suggest that student performance is dependent on the quality of teachers’ assessment tasks, and authentic assessment can play a pivotal role to raise the quality of students’ learning and performance irrespective of their gender, ethnic group, and socioeconomic status. Authentic assessment can serve as a powerful mechanism to ensure equitable learning opportunities and outcomes for all students.

In a second study, Newmann et al. ( 2001 ) examined the effects of authentic assignments or assessments on students’ authentic intellectual work in the day-to-day classroom and students’ achievement in high-stakes standardized tests. Samples of classroom assignments were collected from 19 elementary schools in Chicago. The study involved approximately 5,000 students and their teachers in grades 3, 6, and 8. These grades were purposefully selected because of the relevance of using test scores from both the statewide and national testing programs. This allowed the researchers to “link teacher assignments both to student performance on state tests of reading, writing, and mathematics and to results from the national norm-reference tests of reading and mathematics” (Newmann et al. 2001 , p. 16). In addition to test scores, teacher assignments in writing and mathematics were analyzed for their intellectual demands. A group of teachers from the Chicago public schools were trained to judge the quality of teacher assignments using scoring rubrics that consisted of the criteria for authentic intellectual work. Newmann et al. ( 2001 ) found that when teachers organized instruction around authentic assignments, students not only produced more authentic, intellectually complex work but also gained greater scores in both statewide and national tests in reading and mathematics. Similar results were noted in some very disadvantaged classrooms. Newmann et al. ( 2001 ) also pointed out that the intellectual demands in teacher assignments or assessment tasks played a far more important role than a particular teaching strategy or pedagogical method to influence student engagement in learning. Hence, professional development for teachers should focus on their capacity in designing and using curriculum materials and classroom assessments that include high authentic intellectual challenge.

Newmann et al.’s ( 1996 ) work, originating in the United States, has been adapted and expanded in the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (Lingard et al., 2001 ). The criteria for authentic intellectual work provided the basis for the Queensland model of productive pedagogies, assessment, and performance (Lingard et al. 2001 ). In Lingard et al.’s ( 2001 ) criteria for productive assessment, the three Newmann criteria of authentic intellectual work were extended to include knowledge criticism , technical metalanguage , inclusive knowledge , and explicitness of expectations as new indicators. Similar to Newmann et al.’s ( 1996 ) authentic pedagogy, productive pedagogies were intellectually demanding, connected to the real world, supportive of student learning, and diversity valuing. Lingard et al. ( 2001 ) found that the levels of intellectual or cognitive demand of teachers’ assessment tasks were positively associated with the quality of students’ performance as evidenced in students’ written work. This important finding has led to the New Basics trial of curriculum in grades 1‒9 in Queensland schools. The New Basics curriculum was aligned with productive pedagogies and rich tasks (i.e., authentic tasks). The trial yielded positive outcomes. As such, the use of rich tasks and teacher-moderated judgment of students’ work in response to rich tasks have become exemplary assessment practices in many Queensland schools. Such exemplary assessment practices are applauded by policy makers, school administrators, educators, and researchers around the globe. This has led to the Core 1 Pedagogy and Assessment project in Singapore (Luke, Freebody, Lau, & Gopinathan, 2005 ).

Both the Newmann et al. ( 1996 ) and Lingard et al. ( 2001 ) studies served as the basis for Koh and Luke’s ( 2009 ) study of Singaporean teachers’ assessment practices. As one of the world’s high-performing education systems, Singapore has launched a variety of educational reforms since the beginning of the 21st century . Like their counterparts in other developed countries, Singaporean teachers have been urged to implement new forms of assessment (i.e., authentic assessment and formative assessment) to capture higher-order learning outcomes in the intended curriculum. The Koh and Luke study was conducted to examine Singaporean teachers’ assessment practices as well as the quality of teachers’ assessment tasks and the quality of students’ work in grades 5 and 9 in seven subject areas: English, social studies, mathematics, sciences, Mandarin Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. It was the first large-scale empirical study of teachers’ assessment practices and the data were drawn from a representative sample of Singaporean classrooms. Following the framework of Newmann et al. ( 1996 ) and the work from Anderson and Krathwohl ( 2001 ), Marzano ( 1992 ), and Nitko ( 2004 ), Koh and Luke ( 2009 ) have devised nine criteria for assessing the quality of teachers’ assessment tasks and six criteria for assessing the quality of students’ work in response to the assessment tasks.

The nine criteria for assessment tasks were depth of knowledge , knowledge criticism , knowledge manipulation , sustained writing , task clarity and organization , connections to the real world beyond the classroom , supportive task framing , student control , and explicit performance standards or marking criteria . The six criteria for assessing the quality of students’ work included depth of knowledge , knowledge criticism , knowledge manipulation , sustained writing , quality of students’ writing or answers , and connections to the real world beyond the classroom (Koh, 2011a ).

Brief descriptions of the criteria are as follows:

Depth of Knowledge

According to the revised Bloom’s taxonomy of intended student learning outcomes, there are three types of knowledge, namely, factual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and advanced concepts or conceptual knowledge (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001 ). Factual knowledge is knowledge of discrete and decontextualized content elements (i.e., bits of information), while procedural knowledge entails knowledge of using discipline-specific skills, rules, algorithms, techniques, tools, and methods. Conceptual knowledge involves knowledge of complex, organized, and structured knowledge forms (e.g., how a particular subject matter is organized and structured, how the different parts or bits of information are interconnected and interrelated in a more systematic manner, and how these parts function together). All three types of knowledge are essential for student learning.

Knowledge Criticism

Based on models of critical literacy and critical pedagogy, knowledge criticism is a predisposition to the generation of alternative perspectives, critical arguments, and new solutions or knowledge (Luke, 2004 ). Knowledge criticism enables students to judge the value, credibility, and soundness of different sources of information or knowledge through comparison and critique rather than to accept and present all information or knowledge as given.

Knowledge Manipulation

Knowledge manipulation calls for an application of higher-order thinking and reasoning skills in the reconstruction of texts, intellectual artifacts, and knowledge. It involves organization, interpretation, analysis, synthesis, and/or evaluation of different sources of knowledge or information (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001 ). Authentic assessments or tasks should provide students with more opportunities to make their own hypotheses and generalizations in order to solve problems, arrive at conclusions, or discover new meanings, rather than only to reproduce information expounded by the teacher or textbooks, or to reproduce fragments of knowledge and preordained procedures.

Sustained Writing

This criterion aims to gauge the degree to which the assessment task requires and generates production of extended chunks of prose. Authentic assessments or tasks must ask students to elaborate on their nuances/understanding, explanations, arguments, or conclusions through the generation of sustained written prose.

Task clarity and organization , student control , and explicit performance standards or marking criteria are conceptualized based on Marzano’s ( 1992 ) learning-centered instruction. The assumption here is that the explicitness of the procedures and criteria for the assessment task provides clear goals and explicit criteria and language for the assessment of value. The incorporation of these criteria into the classroom assessment provides students with ample opportunity to engage in formative assessment or assessment for learning, which contributes to their self-directed learning, independent learning, and critical thinking.

Task Clarity and Organization

The assessment task is framed logically and has instructions that are easy to understand so that students will not have misinterpretations and missing information. The written instructions, guidelines, worksheets, and other textual advanced organizers must be clear and well organized.

Connections to the Real World Beyond the Classroom

This criterion assesses the degree to which the assessment task and affiliated artifacts were connected to an activity, function, or task in a real-world situation.

Supportive Task Framing

Teachers’ scaffolding of an assignment or assessment task—that is, providing some structure and guidance—can assist students to accomplish a complex task (Nitko, 2004 ). There are three types of scaffolding: content, procedural, and strategic. For highly intellectual tasks, teachers should place more emphasis on strategic scaffolding.

Student Control

Teachers provide students with the opportunity to determine the parameters of a task such as topics or questions to answer, alternative procedures, tools and resources to use (e.g., textbook, Internet, or newspaper), length of writing or response, or performance or marking criteria.

Explicit Performance Standards/Marking Criteria

The assessment task is provided with the teacher’s clear expectations for students’ performance and the marking criteria are made explicitly clear to the students. Reference to only technical or procedural requirements (e.g., the number of examples, length of an essay or response) is not taken as evidence of explicit performance standards or marking criteria. This criterion underscores the importance of sharing scoring criteria with students explicitly, which is also a key criteria espoused by Wiggins ( 1989 ) and Gulikers et al. ( 2004 ). To ensure fairness and equity, students need to know in advance the specific and differentiated criteria for what may count as “value,” quality, or success at completion of the task.

Given that the theoretical underpinnings of the criteria for assessing the quality of students’ work are similar to those for teachers’ assessment tasks, they will not be repeated here. Readers who are interested in the criteria and indicators used to judge the quality of teachers’ assessment tasks and students’ work across different subject areas can refer to Koh ( 2011a ).

Future Research: The Remaining Questions

In the context of professional and vocational training, Gulikers, Bastiaens, Kirschner, and Kester ( 2008 ) have argued that the notion of authenticity is subjective and students’ perceptions of the authenticity of an assessment or a task can influence the quality of their learning. Their study has shown that there is a difference between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of assessment authenticity. As such, it is important to take into account students’ perceptions of meaningfulness or relevance of an assessment or a task to their real-life situations. Further, this finding also supports another crucial aspect of authentic assessment task design, that is, students must be involved in the process of determining and negotiating the assessment or task parameters (i.e., student control).

There has been a substantial body of research in teacher professional learning and development in classroom assessment or formative assessment. Many of them have focused on formative assessment or assessment for learning and models of effective professional development. Koh ( 2011b ) has conducted a two-year intervention study with a group of elementary teachers in Singapore, to examine the effects of ongoing, sustained professional development in authentic assessment task design on the teachers’ assessment literacy, specifically teachers’ capacity in designing and implementing authentic assessment tasks. To enhance teachers’ understanding and internalization of the criteria for authentic intellectual quality in designing authentic tasks, only five of the key criteria were used in Koh’s ( 2011b ) study: depth of knowledge , knowledge criticism , knowledge manipulation , sustained writing or extended communication , and connections to the real world beyond the classroom . The study has demonstrated positive results in improving teachers’ assessment literacy through ongoing, sustained professional development in authentic assessment task design in English, mathematics, and science at the elementary school level. In addition, in-depth interviews with the participating teachers have shown that their conceptions of authentic assessment have greatly improved toward the end of the two-year professional development. In a second study, Koh, Burke, Luke, Gong, and Tan ( in press ) found that Chinese language teachers had difficulty to incorporate certain knowledge manipulation criteria into their assessment tasks despite a quick grasp of the design principles of authentic assessment.

Webb ( 2009 ) has called for professional development in mathematics education to focus on “helping teachers to develop a ‘designers’ eye’ for selecting, adapting, and designing tasks to assess student understanding” (p. 3). Although the term “authentic assessment” was not directly used by Webb ( 2009 ), we can make inferences that authentic assessment is the most effective way of assessing student understanding across different subjects or disciplines.

Given that teachers need to have a “designers’ eye” (Webb, 2009 , p. 3) or to be critical and intelligent consumers of high-quality authentic assessment or performance assessment, it is important for professional development and teacher education programs to provide both inservice and preservice teachers with ample opportunity to engage in authentic assessment task design and analysis of student work. For future research, the remaining questions should focus on building teachers’ capacity in authentic assessment and assessment for learning through a critical inquiry approach in school-based professional learning community or in teacher education programs. According to Wyatt-Smith and Gunn ( 2009 ), the critical inquiry approach refers to teachers’ ability to reflect on and understand the assessment processes and practices in actual sociocultural contexts in relation to four important lenses: (1) conceptions of the knowledge domains and competencies to be assessed; (2) conceptions of the alignment between assessment, teaching, and learning, and its enactment in practice; (3) teacher judgment practices in relation to standards, assessment task design, student work samples, and social moderation; and (4) curriculum literacies or discipline-specific language demands. To enable the power of authentic assessment to unfold in the classrooms of the early 21st century , it is essential that teachers are critical designers and reflective practitioners of classroom assessment tasks that support student learning and mastery of the 21st-century competencies.

Teachers’ capacity to design and implement authentic assessment is of paramount importance in the current era of competency-based education. In fact, authentic assessment has been used in International Baccalaureate programs and has also been incorporated into school-based assessments in several high-performing nations on PISA. The nations are Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, and Australia. However, it is worth noting that the success of authentic assessment initiatives can be hindered by changes in school leadership or governmental policies. For example, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 in the United States and the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN, 2008 ) in Queensland, Australia have posed challenges to school-based, teacher-moderated assessment due to an overemphasis on “back to basics” and high-stakes accountability testing of students’ academic achievement.

In 2010 , the launch of the Common Core Standards in the Unites States brought significant changes in curriculum, assessment, and instruction. The standards define the 21st-century knowledge, skills, and dispositions students should have mastered within their K‒12 education so that they are well prepared for achieving their academic and careers aspirations as well as personal well-being in an increasingly complex and competitive world. Ideally, the Common Core Standards have created opportunities for the development and implementation of authentic assessments or performance assessments in English language arts and mathematics. However, a heavy focus on the use of student assessment data for accountability purposes has led to a push back from state governments, teachers, and parents. A lack of teacher autonomy in the design and use of assessments to help students achieve the 21st-century educational outcomes has defeated the original purpose of the Common Core. Hence, it is important for policy makers in the US and other countries to model the Finnish education system, in which teachers are given full autonomy to develop and implement classroom assessments that support student learning.

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Should we do away with exams altogether? No, but we need to rethink their design and purpose

Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology, Macquarie University

Senior Lecturer in Educational Assessment, Macquarie University

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In our five-part series, Making Sense of Exams , we’ll discuss the purpose of exams, whether they can be done online, overcoming exam anxiety, and effective revision techniques.

Over the past two decades there have been frequent calls to abandon exams .

The major criticisms of exams in schools and universities tend to relate to either the misuse or overuse of exams, and not to the sensible use of exams in partnership with other assessment tasks such as presentations, research reports, creative responses, essays, reflective journals etc.

Rethinking the way in which some exams are delivered does not require us to abandon all exams in favour of other assessment tasks. This is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Exams allow students to demonstrate their breadth of knowledge across a particular subject. This is more difficult to achieve with other forms of assessment.

Students also demonstrate their ability to retrieve and apply knowledge on the spot: a skill necessary in many professions.

But we need to look at what the evidence tells us about when exams are effective – and when other types of assessment are more suitable.

In debates about exams, the same myths are often brought up again and again. Here’s what the research tells us about three of the most common exam myths:

Myth 1: exams only test for the recall of facts

One of the most common arguments offered against exams is that they test for rote recall only and not for deeper understanding.

Like others, we have experienced the frustration of sitting for an exam that focuses almost exclusively on the recall of isolated facts. Research shows that such exams are more common when teachers either write questions quickly or rely on published tests from testing banks. In both cases, the teacher has less opportunity to review whether or not the questions require deep understanding and higher-order thinking, which require the learner to both hold a strong body of disciplinary knowledge and be capable of applying it.

The solution is not to abandon exams, but to change how poorly designed exam questions are written.

A well-designed exam will assess the application of knowledge to real-world scenarios, the synthesis of knowledge across sub-topics, the ability to think critically, or to solve well-defined problems within a discipline.

These higher-order processes depend entirely on the question being asked. According to research, even quite short professional development programs for teachers are effective in changing the way they write exam questions.

Exams should not be used to assess the recall of meaningless facts: this is a misuse of the format.

Myth 2: Google renders exams irrelevant

A second argument sometimes offered against exams is that everything can be found on Google anyway.

The implication, of course, is that we no longer need knowledge in our brains when we have phones in our pockets.

A variant of this argument is that internet access should always be permitted during exams as this mirrors our experiences in real life.

These arguments are problematic for two reasons.

First, research shows that people without knowledge in a particular field are surprisingly poor at finding accurate information on Google. They are more likely to find and believe conspiracy theories, for example, less likely to know what search terms to use, and less likely to reason logically about the information they find.

Second, looking up information on Google is not the same as accessing a pre-existing network of knowledge in the brain.

Pre-existing knowledge is critical because it guides the way in which we interpret new information and underpins critical thinking and problem solving .

Even if a student is taught generic skills in critical thinking and analysis, a wide breadth of knowledge is also needed to know what arguments are relevant in a particular domain and how they might be applied. This breadth of knowledge cannot be obtained simply by Googling.

It is precisely because our teachers, surgeons, scientists and building engineers have an established network of knowledge in their fields, held in long-term memory , that they are able to instantaneously apply this knowledge in the workplace, critically assess the validity of incoming information, and solve emerging problems on the run.

Myth 3: exam study does not enhance learning

Exams do not just assess learning, they promote learning in several ways:

Organising yourself to study promotes self-regulation and metacognition (that is, your understanding and control of your own learning processes).

Re-organising and elaborating on the to-be-tested material during study enables deeper understanding of the material.

The process of actively retrieving and applying that material multiple times during study is one of the best possible ways to strengthen knowledge. Just as practice helps muscles grow stronger during exercise, so too does it make connections in the brain grow stronger during study.

Of course, some study techniques are better than others.

Research shows that study in which students mentally manipulate the material – perhaps by forming their own questions, or by considering how different topics relate to one another – is more effective than study in which students passively scan their notes.

These techniques are a form of “deep encoding” , in which the student is required to actively negotiate meaning and to make decisions about what goes with what.

Research also shows that spacing out study over time is more effective for retaining information than cramming the night before .

With this knowledge, teachers can support students to study in the most effective ways possible.

Exams should be used within a balanced assessment program

The goal of any assessment program is to enable students to demonstrate what they know and can do . Within this program, exams have specific advantages.

Exams should not be used in all assessments (or even in all disciplines). Some types of assessments are clearly better suited to particular kinds of knowledge and skills than others.

Where research skills are important, a research proposal or report may be more appropriate.

Where oral communication skills are important, a presentation task may be more appropriate.

And where depth of knowledge of a single topic is important – either because of the specific topic itself or because a more focused investigation will allow the student to practise and refine particular learning skills – then an essay, class debate, or similar assessment may be more appropriate.

But arguing that exams cannot do everything is not the same as arguing they can do nothing. In nearly all school and university courses there are multiple goals, therefore a balanced assessment program is critical .

When considering the purpose of exams

We need to be careful when considering the use of exams in schools and universities.

We need to know that they are appropriate to the knowledge and skills being assessed, and that they form part of a balanced assessment program with a range of different assessment tasks.

We also must be aware of the unintended consequences that emerge in specific testing circumstances.

This is true for national testing programs such as the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), for example, where the potential to publicly rank schools has led to concerns about “ teaching to the test ” and narrowing the curriculum. These unintended consequences must be addressed.

When used well, however, exams offer several advantages for learning.

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What Does the Research Say About Testing?

There’s too much testing in schools, most teachers agree, but well-designed classroom tests and quizzes can improve student recall and retention.

For many teachers, the image of students sitting in silence filling out bubbles, computing mathematical equations, or writing timed essays causes an intensely negative reaction.

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 and its 2015 update, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), every third through eighth grader in U.S. public schools now takes tests calibrated to state standards, with the aggregate results made public. In a study of the nation’s largest urban school districts , students took an average of 112 standardized tests between pre-K and grade 12.

This annual testing ritual can take time from genuine learning, say many educators , and puts pressure on the least advantaged districts to focus on test prep—not to mention adding airless, stultifying hours of proctoring to teachers’ lives. “Tests don’t explicitly teach anything. Teachers do,” writes Jose Vilson , a middle school math teacher in New York City. Instead of standardized tests, students “should have tests created by teachers with the goal of learning more about the students’ abilities and interests,” echoes Meena Negandhi, math coordinator at the French American Academy in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The pushback on high-stakes testing has also accelerated a national conversation about how students truly learn and retain information. Over the past decade and a half, educators have been moving away from traditional testing —particularly multiple choice tests—and turning to hands-on projects and competency-based assessments that focus on goals such as critical thinking and mastery rather than rote memorization.

But educators shouldn’t give up on traditional classroom tests so quickly. Research has found that tests can be valuable tools to help students learn , if designed and administered with format, timing, and content in mind—and a clear purpose to improve student learning.

Not All Tests Are Bad

One of the most useful kinds of tests are the least time-consuming: quick, easy practice quizzes on recently taught content. Tests can be especially beneficial if they are given frequently and provide near-immediate feedback to help students improve. This retrieval practice can be as simple as asking students to write down two to four facts from the prior day or giving them a brief quiz on a previous class lesson.

Retrieval practice works because it helps students retain information in a better way than simply studying material, according to research . While reviewing concepts can help students become more familiar with a topic, information is quickly forgotten without more active learning strategies like frequent practice quizzes.

But to reduce anxiety and stereotype threat—the fear of conforming to a negative stereotype about a group that one belongs to—retrieval-type practice tests also need to be low-stakes (with minor to no grades) and administered up to three times before a final summative effort to be most effective.

Timing also matters. Students are able to do fine on high-stakes assessment tests if they take them shortly after they study. But a week or more after studying, students retain much less information and will do much worse on major assessments—especially if they’ve had no practice tests in between.

A 2006 study found that students who had brief retrieval tests before a high-stakes test remembered 60 percent of material, while those who only studied remembered 40 percent. Additionally, in a 2009 study , eighth graders who took a practice test halfway through the year remembered 10 percent more facts on a U.S. history final at the end of the year than peers who studied but took no practice test.

Short, low-stakes tests also help teachers gauge how well students understand the material and what they need to reteach. This is effective when tests are formative —that is, designed for immediate feedback so that students and teachers can see students’ areas of strength and weakness and address areas for growth. Summative tests, such as a final exam that measures how much was learned but offers no opportunities for a student to improve, have been found to be less effective.

Testing Format Matters

Teachers should tread carefully with test design, however, as not all tests help students retain information. Though multiple choice tests are relatively easy to create, they can contain misleading answer choices—that are either ambiguous or vague—or offer the infamous all-, some-, or none-of-the-above choices, which tend to encourage guessing.

While educators often rely on open-ended questions, such short-answer questions, because they seem to offer a genuine window into student thinking, research shows that there is no difference between multiple choice and constructed response questions in terms of demonstrating what students have learned.

In the end, well-constructed multiple choice tests , with clear questions and plausible answers (and no all- or none-of-the-above choices), can be a useful way to assess students’ understanding of material, particularly if the answers are quickly reviewed by the teacher.

All students do not do equally well on multiple choice tests, however. Girls tend to do less well than boys and perform better on questions with open-ended answers , according to a 2018 study by Stanford University’s Sean Reardon, which found that test format alone accounts for 25 percent of the gender difference in performance in both reading and math. Researchers hypothesize that one explanation for the gender difference on high-stakes tests is risk aversion, meaning girls tend to guess less .

Giving more time for fewer, more complex or richer testing questions can also increase performance, in part because it reduces anxiety. Research shows that simply introducing a time limit on a test can cause students to experience stress, so instead of emphasizing speed, teachers should encourage students to think deeply about the problems they’re solving.

Setting the Right Testing Conditions

Test achievement often reflects outside conditions, and how students do on tests can be shifted substantially by comments they hear and what they receive as feedback from teachers.

When teachers tell disadvantaged high school students that an upcoming assessment may be a challenge and that challenge helps the brain grow, students persist more, leading to higher grades, according to 2015 research from Stanford professor David Paunesku. Conversely, simply saying that some students are good at a task without including a growth-mindset message or the explanation that it’s because they are smart harms children’s performance —even when the task is as simple as drawing shapes.

Also harmful to student motivation are data walls displaying student scores or assessments. While data walls might be useful for educators, a 2014 study found that displaying them in classrooms led students to compare status rather than improve work.

The most positive impact on testing comes from peer or instructor comments that give the student the ability to revise or correct. For example, questions like , “Can you tell me more about what you mean?” or “Can you find evidence for that?” can encourage students to improve  engagement with their work. Perhaps not surprisingly, students do well when given multiple chances to learn and improve—and when they’re encouraged to believe that they can.

The Value of Using Tests in Education as Tools for Learning—Not Just for Assessment

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• Published: 08 September 2023
• Volume 35 , article number  89 , ( 2023 )

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• Jeri L. Little   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9860-7905 2 &
• Elizabeth L. Bjork 1  

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Although students tend to dislike exams, tests—broadly defined in the present commentary as opportunities to practice retrieving to-be-learned information—can function as one of the most powerful learning tools. However, tests have a variety of attributes that affect their efficacy as a learning tool. For example, tests can have high and low stakes (i.e., the proportion of a student’s grade the exam is worth), vary in frequency, cover different ranges of course content (e.g., cumulative versus non-cumulative exams), appear in many forms (e.g., multiple-choice versus short answer), and occur before or after the presentation of what is to be learned. In this commentary, we discuss how these different approaches to test design can impact the ability of tests to enhance learning and how their use as instruments of learning—not just means of assessment—can benefit long-term learning. We suggest that instructors use frequent, low-stakes, cumulative exams and a variety of test formats (e.g., cued recall, multiple-choice, and true/false) and give students exams both prior to learning and following the presentation of the to-be-learned material.

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Formative and Stealth Assessment

A method to assist students with effective study habits and test-taking strategies.

Michael F. Nolan

Assessment in the service of learning: challenges and opportunities or Plus ça Change, Plus c’est la même Chose

Hugh Burkhardt & Alan Schoenfeld

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Over the first two decades of life, many of us spend a huge portion of our time in school as students. As instructors, most of us strive to make these years as effective as possible for students by utilizing teaching and assessment techniques typically considered to be the best. However, in the present commentary, we propose that despite having this admirable goal of doing our best to optimize the quality of learning achieved by our students, we often do not implement, or at least not to the degree that we should, the most effective techniques to enhance our students’ learning, particularly in terms of long-term retention and transfer. Specifically, we have come to primarily use tests as a mechanism for assessment and often overlook their use as a powerful tool for learning.

Tests: from Assessing Learning to Promote Learning

In educational settings, learning is a multifaceted process involving the acquisition, retention, and application of knowledge and skills. It encompasses not only the immediate gains in performance that can be observed during or shortly after a learning activity but also the more enduring changes in memory and understanding that lead to enhanced long-term retention and transfer of knowledge. While immediate gains in performance may give the appearance of effective learning, they can sometimes be deceiving, as they may represent only superficial improvements without true comprehension or retention. Actual learning, on the other hand, is characterized by the ability to retrieve and apply the learned information over time and in different contexts. That is, evidence of actual learning can be seen when students demonstrate the ability to recall and apply the learned material on subsequent assessments or in real-world situations, even after a delay. Additionally, instructors can look for signs of deep understanding and the ability to make connections between different concepts, indicating that students have achieved meaningful learning of the material rather than just rote memorization of it.

To assess learning, instructors can monitor students’ progress over time, evaluate their performance on different types of assessments (e.g., quizzes, exams, problem-solving tasks), and provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding in varied contexts. The types of assessments instructors use to see how much their students know can do more than just assess their knowledge—they can also help them learn. Additionally, feedback on assessments can play a crucial role in identifying areas for improvement and guiding students toward more effective study strategies. By carefully observing students’ learning outcomes and adjusting instructional methods based on this information, instructors can create a supportive learning environment that fosters meaningful, long-lasting, and transferable learning.

The discussion above characterizes two prominent views of the role of assessment in education: summative assessment and formative assessment. Summative assessment is often associated with traditional testing methods and is used to measure overall achievement and learning outcomes at the end of a specific instructional period or course. Summative assessment is typically used to assign grades and make judgments about students’ performance. However, as educators, we advocate for going beyond the traditional use of tests solely for summative purposes. Instead, we propose utilizing tests as formative assessments as well. Formative assessment involves the use of ongoing, low-stakes evaluation methods, such as practice tests and quizzes, to inform both students and teachers about the student’s current level of understanding and knowledge. These assessments are intended to guide and shape the learning process, allowing students to identify areas of weakness and instructors to tailor their teaching methods accordingly. By embracing the dual role of tests as both summative and formative evaluation tools, we can enhance students’ learning experiences and promote more effective long-term retention and understanding of course content.

Formative assessment has traditionally been used to convey the way testing indirectly promotes learning (by improving future learning), but testing can also play a direct role in enhancing learning through retrieval processes. When students engage in testing, they actively retrieve information from memory, reinforcing existing retrieval routes and establishing new ones (Bjork, 1975 ; Carrier & Pashler, 1992 ; McDaniel & Masson, 1985 ). This process strengthens memory and facilitates better long-term retention of the material.

In this commentary, we adopt a broad definition of testing, focusing on its use as a tool for learning and encompassing both formal and informal activities that prompt students to answer questions related to course content. This definition includes traditional formal assessments such as quizzes and exams, but it also extends to other question-answering activities such as responding to polling questions or participating in review games, which may have lower stakes and be less formal. Our main goal is to encourage instructors to incorporate activities that prompt students to actively retrieve information from memory, as this process has been shown to enhance learning and long-term retention (e.g., Bjork, 1975 ). These activities can take different forms, such as low-stakes quizzes, clicker questions, or review games, but the underlying principle is the same: engaging students in retrieval practice to strengthen their memory representations and promote deeper learning.

How Can Testing Act as a Desirable Difficulty?

More broadly, using tests as a tool for learning represents a desirable difficulty (e.g., Bjork & Bjork, 2014 , 2022 ; Karpicke, 2017 ). These learning strategies create challenges for learners, which may initially make it more difficult to perform correctly and thus appear to slow down the learning process. However, these difficulties ultimately result in the type of learning that is highly desirable: learning that is both long-lasting and transferable. Examples of such desirable difficulties include (a) spaced or distributed practice (versus blocked or massed practice; Bjork & Allen, 1970 ; Cepeda et al., 2006 ; Greene, 2008 ; Karpicke & Bauernschmidt, 2011 ; Murphy et al., 2022 ); (b) contextual variation (that is, changing the conditions of practice rather than keeping them constant and predictable (Imundo et al., 2021 ; Smith et al., 1978 ); (c) interleaving (varying the topics being studied rather than studying only one over and over again before moving on to the next one (e.g., Kornell & Bjork, 2008 ); and (d) testing or retrieval practice (DeWinstanley & Bjork, 2004 ; Halamish & Bjork, 2011 ; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a ).

It is important to note that desirable difficulties are not solely defined by their level of difficulty but by their ability to induce the type of cognitive processing that enhances learning. While some learning strategies may be challenging, that characteristic alone does not enable them to enhance learning. Rather, it is whether the difficulties or challenges they present lead the learner to engage in the type of cognitive processes that produce improved retention and understanding. The key lies in the processes induced during the learning or study experience rather than the perceived difficulty of that activity itself. The term “desirable difficulties” serves to remind both instructors and students that encountering challenges during the learning activity, even when doing so may appear to slow down one’s performance gains, should not be equated with the production of poor learning outcomes. Instead, the focus should be on identifying whether the difficulties being encountered during that learning activity are leading the student to engage in effective learning processes.

Rather than focusing on making tests more difficult, instructors can better serve their students by ensuring that the students are engaging in such beneficial learning strategies during the testing experience. The goal is to design assessments that prompt active retrieval, encourage critical thinking, and foster deep engagement with the material. Instructors can use a variety of testing formats, such as multiple-choice questions with competitive alternatives, cued-recall questions, or collaborative testing, to promote engagement in these desirable learning processes. By understanding the underlying mechanisms through which testing improves learning, instructors can strategically employ testing as a powerful tool for enhancing retention, understanding, and transfer of knowledge.

What Factors Should Be Considered When Administering Tests?

When designing or administering tests, instructors make several decisions that can impact the effectiveness of the test as a tool for learning. One key decision is the number of tests and the subsequent stakes of each test (i.e., the proportion of a student’s final course grade that will be tied to their performance on each exam). For instance, having just one or two high-stakes exams (e.g., the popular use of having only a mid-term and a final) compared to including many lower-stakes exams and/or quizzes (more frequent testing can result in each test being worth less in terms of grade percentage) may be less effective at creating long-lasting learning. Another key decision for instructors to make is the range of course content that each test will cover (e.g., whether to use cumulative or non-cumulative exams). Additionally, the test format is an important decision to make, as tests can appear in many forms (e.g., multiple-choice vs. short answer), and these different forms can vary widely in their ability to function as a tool for learning.

Each of these different decisions or approaches to test design can impact the quality of learning that students will achieve (i.e., whether it will be learning that remains accessible and transferable for the long term or becomes quickly inaccessible or forgotten) and thus needs to be carefully considered by instructors. Additionally, there may be unusual approaches to testing that can enhance learning, such as using tests prior to learning (i.e., as pretests). Moreover, incorporating more competitive alternatives (i.e., those that are plausible enough to be seriously considered) into multiple-choice tests, thereby causing students to engage in more retrieval processes as opposed to recognition processes to select the correct alternative, may lead to greater retention and understanding of the tested concepts. Finally, despite the availability of such effective testing practices, these techniques may not be utilized frequently enough by instructors as part of their in-class activities or by students in their independent study strategies (e.g., the productiveness of students’ self-directed study efforts would almost certainly be enhanced by incorporating more self-testing as part of their efforts to learn outside of the classroom). We discuss each of these key decisions and their potential consequences for learning in more detail in the remainder of this commentary with the hope of making a compelling case for how a greater use of testing as a tool for learning rather than just as a means of assessment can be a way to enrich the learning of our students both in and out of the formal classroom setting.

How Can Testing Indirectly and Directly Improve Learning?

Alternatives to desirable difficulties like restudying to-be-remembered information rather than engaging in retrieval practice tend to have the appearance of speeding up learning, which is probably one of the reasons they are so widely used in instruction. However, such gains typically only represent superficial improvements in performance rather than increases in actual learning, and these improvements are not likely to last or to be transferable (e.g., Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b ; Rohrer & Taylor, 2007 ). In contrast, introducing desirable difficulties into one’s instructional practices—because they do challenge the learner—can sometimes slow down one’s apparent gain in performance and thus be incorrectly interpreted as slowing down the learning process. Engaging in the use of such desirable difficulties, however, leads to learning that will be both long-lasting and transferable. Unfortunately, this contrast in immediate performance gains (which is something we can readily observe) versus actual learning (which can only be inferred or measured at a delay) can frequently lead both students and instructors to be tricked into preferring poorer methods of studying or teaching over better, more effective methods.

Testing can improve learning through two distinct routes, both of which are essential for a comprehensive understanding of its impact. The first route, often associated with “formative evaluation,” involves the indirect benefits of testing on learning. Indirect benefits include giving students a better idea of what they do or do not know, so they can plan their future study efforts more effectively (see Rhodes, 2016 for a review on how learners metacognitively monitor their learning). More specifically, students can better monitor their learning when being tested (see Narens et al., 2008 ) because tests reveal what information is accessible and what information they are unable to access (e.g., Little & McDaniel, 2015 ).

As a result, frequent testing can lead to more effective studying, whereby students spend less time studying already-mastered concepts and more time studying yet-to-be-learned material (Dunlosky & Hertzog, 1998 ). However, we must make our students understand that when they self-test and get things wrong, they are not failing; rather, they are identifying what they need to study more of and, thus, creating an opportunity for successful learning of that specific material. That is, we need to help our students understand that not knowing the answer to a given question does not represent a failure or something bad on their part; rather, they should view such occurrences as positive events because they create opportunities for new and effective learning.

The second route, which is not explicitly captured in either formative or summative evaluation, pertains to the direct impact of correctly recalling information during the testing process. When students successfully retrieve information from memory, the act of recalling itself strengthens and modifies the representation of that information in their memory. This process, known as retrieval practice or the testing effect, leads to improved long-term retention and the creation of more robust retrieval routes for future access (Bjork, 1975 ; Carrier & Pashler, 1992 ; McDaniel & Masson, 1985 ). By repeatedly testing their knowledge, students consolidate the learned material in their memory and enhance the accessibility of that information over time and in a variety of contexts.

Both routes highlight the unique benefits of incorporating testing as a powerful tool for learning enhancement. While formative evaluation captures the indirect benefits of testing, the direct impact of successful recall and retrieval practice is equally crucial for fostering durable learning outcomes. By recognizing the dual role of testing in both informing and reinforcing learning, educators can strategically design assessment practices that go beyond mere evaluation and truly optimize the learning process.

How Often Should We Give Tests?

As educators, we should shift our mindset from viewing assessments solely as tests to measure learning (usually at the end of blocks of instruction) to a broader perspective where assessment becomes a powerful tool for enhancing learning (see also Roediger et al., 2011 for the benefits of testing). Doing so means incorporating assessments or testing more frequently throughout the instructional process. Although we should continue to give exams to measure what has been learned after a period of instruction, we should stop thinking of that occasion as the only or main time to employ testing with respect to the learning of that material. We should capitalize on the power of testing for learning with the use of frequent low-stakes testing and the intermixing of various types of testing or retrieval-practice exercises with other types of instructional aids throughout the educational process.

Many courses in both high school and college follow a basic schedule, illustrated on the left side of Fig.  1 . Namely, students spend a few weeks, or often the first half of the course, being introduced to topics A–C, followed by a test covering topics A–C, then spend the second half of the course being introduced to topics D–F, and are then tested on topics D–F. Furthermore, these two exams are often heavily weighted (e.g., each exam is worth ~ 40% of a student’s final grade) and often primarily contain only multiple-choice questions. Although this course schedule and format are commonly used and thus familiar to both students and instructors, on the right side of Fig.  1 we illustrate a better way in which tests can be used to enhance students’ learning experiences and long-term retention.

Example course schedule with two high-stakes exams ( a ) and frequent testing ( b )

When courses contain a small number of tests, with each test accounting for a large portion of a student’s course grade, such exams can trigger test anxiety, a form of academic anxiety involving feelings of fear, dread, or nervousness about an upcoming evaluative event (Cassady, 2004 , 2010 ; Wood et al., 2016 ). Such anxiety can lead to poor academic performance (Cassady & Johnson, 2002 ; Putwain, 2008 ; Putwain & Best, 2011 ; Williams, 1991 ), but there may be ways to reduce test anxiety while also enhancing learning.

First, given the negative aura that the term testing has now come to evoke among many instructors and students, the use of other terms for this instructional aid—such as low-stakes quizzing, retrieval-practice exercises, or measures of progress—may serve to reduce students’ test anxiety (e.g., Agarwal et al., 2014 ). Additionally, rather than giving only a small number of high-stakes exams, employing many low-stakes exams may reduce students’ test anxiety (see Erbe, 2007 ; Silaj et al., 2021 for work on test anxiety in the classroom). Specifically, such frequent testing can provide numerous opportunities for students to reinforce their knowledge, improving their actual understanding of the material and potentially counteracting feelings of anxiety. Additionally, regular testing allows students to identify and address gaps in their knowledge, which can alleviate anxiety stemming from uncertainty about what they know. Thus, as students observe the benefits of repeated testing, they may view testing as a valuable tool rather than something to stress over.

Repeated testing can also harness the benefits of the testing effect to maximize learning. For example, prior work has demonstrated that more frequent exams are associated with better learning outcomes (e.g., Bangert-Drowns et al., 1991 ; Leeming, 2002 ; see also Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a ). More specifically, when Leeming ( 2002 ) compared students who took a short exam at the beginning of every class with students in classes that had only a few exams for the same material, students in the exam-a-day classes achieved significantly better grades, were less likely to drop the class, and performed better on a later test. Furthermore, anonymous questionnaires revealed that most students believed that having an exam every day led to their doing more studying and achieving better learning as compared to their other classes (and students also reported liking this procedure). Thus, frequent exams—and especially ones that not only ask questions about the just presented block of material but also include a few questions from previous blocks, as illustrated in Fig.  1 b—may positively impact student performance, retention, and perceptions of their learning.

The use of different forms of low-stakes testing, such as polling questions (e.g., multiple-choice questions presented electronically via applications like Poll Everywhere, Mentimeter, or responded to with electronic iClicker remotes) or review games (e.g., using applications like Kahoot! or Google Forms), can benefit learners in multiple ways (e.g., Deslauriers et al., 2011 ; Pan et al., 2019 ). Firstly, it promotes active engagement, retrieval practice, and feedback, as many forms of low-stakes testing provide immediate feedback to learners, helping them identify and correct misconceptions or errors. Additionally, as previously mentioned, low-stakes testing seems to reduce test anxiety, creating a relaxed and positive learning environment where learners feel more comfortable taking risks, making mistakes, and learning from them. Moreover, low-stakes testing may increase learners’ motivation to study and prepare for assessments as it provides opportunities for them to see the immediate results of their efforts, leading to a sense of achievement and satisfaction.

Employing frequent tests can also capture the benefits of the spacing effect: when study time is distributed rather than massed, long-term memory is improved (Bjork & Allen, 1970 ; Cepeda et al., 2006 ; Greene, 2008 ; Karpicke & Bauernschmidt, 2011 ; Murphy et al., 2022 ; see Carpenter, 2017 for a review). Specifically, we can induce our students to space their studying and learning activities by using more frequent tests as opposed to having them resort to cramming before high-stakes exams (Fitch et al., 1951 ), which may support short-term performance but does not lead to long-term learning. Additionally, more frequent tests may result in the same information being tested twice (assuming exams are cumulative to some degree, as represented in Fig.  1 b), which should result in accruing the benefits of spaced retrieval (Balota et al., 2007 ). As such, although cumulative exams are often disliked by students, cumulative exams can be more beneficial for their learning than non-cumulative exams (Lawrence, 2013 ) by harnessing both the testing effect (i.e., frequent testing of earlier course material) and the spacing effect (i.e., students’ revisiting previously learned concepts during their preparation for cumulative exams). Thus, incorporating frequent tests that are cumulative, at least to some extent, can leverage both the benefits of retrieval practice and spacing.

Just as we advocate the use of tests as providing beneficial retrieval practice, we also believe that a balanced and thoughtful grading approach (how to weigh each course activity as it relates to students’ grades) is essential. By considering the current research on grading and retrieval practice in real-world educational contexts, instructors can make informed decisions to create supportive learning environments that maximize student learning and minimize test anxiety. We encourage further investigation into grading approaches and their impact on learning outcomes so instructors can implement evidence-based practices that promote meaningful and lasting learning.

What Kind of Test Formats Are Best?

Although we have so far extolled the benefits of testing or retrieval practice for enhancing learning, instructors need to be aware that not all types of tests or retrieval practice exercises produce the same benefits for learning. For example, while the multiple-choice format is more practical to use in large classes due to the ease and efficiency with which such questions can be graded (thereby lessening the time before feedback can be provided to students), instructors need to create such questions in a way that they require active retrieval on the part of the students.

To do so, multiple-choice questions need to provide the student with a set of competitive alternatives (i.e., alternatives that are plausible enough to be possible correct answers) so that students need to retrieve information about each alternative to select the correct one as opposed to being able to easily recognize a correct answer from, say, a set of alternatives that are mostly non-competitive or implausible possibilities. In other words, to produce enhanced learning, instructors need to create the type of multiple-choice questions that require students to engage in active retrieval processes. For example, imagine a question about the name of the Greek goddess of love ( answer : Aphrodite). The names of other Greek and Roman goddesses (e.g., Venus, Hera, and Athena) would be more competitive than the names of Greek and Roman gods (e.g., Zeus, Mars, and Hades) or names that are not even Greek or Roman gods or goddesses. Here, the names of other Greek and Roman goddesses are more plausible as the correct answer and students may need to think about why such alternatives are wrong (e.g., Venus is the Roman goddess of love) to reject them (see Little et al., 2019 ).

It is important to note that while all competitive alternatives are plausible, not all plausible alternatives are necessarily competitive. In the context of multiple-choice questions with competitive alternatives, competitive alternatives are those that require students to retrieve information about each option to determine the correct answer. This process of active retrieval enhances learning and can lead to better performance on both previously asked questions and related questions. Plausible alternatives, on the other hand, simply answer choices that make sense in the context of the question and could be seen as potentially correct, but they may not require the same level of retrieval as competitive alternatives. To develop competitive alternatives, instructors need to ensure that each alternative is based on information that is closely related to the correct answer, thus requiring students to engage in retrieval processes. On the contrary, plausible alternatives may not be related in such a way that prompts active retrieval. However, it is important to strike a balance between providing competitive alternatives that challenge students without making the questions overly difficult or confusing.

Competitive multiple-choice questions can also enhance students’ ability to answer questions about one of the formerly incorrect alternatives on a later exam (Little & Bjork, 2015 ; Little et al., 2012 ). That is, such multiple-choice questions can enhance later performance for both previously asked questions and new related questions. This advantage is thought to arise because when competitive alternatives are provided, students try to retrieve what they have learned about each alternative, and this effort then not only strengthens what they have previously heard or read about the correct choice but also strengthens what they have previously heard or read about each of the competitive alternatives (Little & Bjork, 2015 ; Little et al., 2019 ).

To test this possible explanation, Little and Bjork ( 2015 ) had students read lessons on the solar system and ferrets before completing a practice multiple-choice test for one of those topics. On the test, half of the questions had competitive alternatives and half had non-competitive alternatives. For example, some participants might answer, “What is the hottest terrestrial planet?” with the choices Venus, Mars, and Mercury (competitive alternatives), while other participants were required to answer that same question but with Venus, Uranus, and Saturn as choices (non-competitive alternatives in that neither Uranus nor Saturn are terrestrial planets). Additionally, if the Venus question had appeared as a competitive question, participants would have also received a question about Neptune that was competitive, with Saturn and Uranus as choices, and if the Venus question had been presented as a non-competitive question, participants would have received a question about Neptune with Mars and Mercury as choices. On a later delayed exam, students were significantly better at answering new questions about the alternatives (e.g., Which planet was first visited by Mariner 10? Answer : Mercury; Which planet’s axial tilt is 90° to the plane of its orbit? Answer : Uranus) when those alternatives had been included as competitive alternatives than when they had not been.

Follow-up research used a procedure in which participants were asked to report what they were thinking when they answered such multiple-choice questions (Little et al., 2019 ). Most participants reported at least occasionally using an elimination strategy, and in some cases, participants spontaneously reported recalling information about the incorrect alternatives to reject them. When participants recalled information about the incorrect alternative and then that alternative was the correct answer to a question appearing on a later cued-recall test, such participants were very likely to correctly answer that question. Thus, the implementation of appropriate incorrect alternatives for multiple-choice questions is an important component of writing questions that can produce enhanced learning for both information that is directly tested and information that is related to that question’s correct answer but is not directly tested.

Besides competitive multiple-choice questions, other forms of questions can enhance learning. For example, questions requiring the student to engage in generation processes as part of obtaining the correct answer can benefit learning. Specifically, students’ later performance will be enhanced because it will benefit from the generation effect: better long-term memory when learners take an active part in producing the information they are to learn. Applied to assessment, instructors should incorporate more opportunities for students to generate the to-be-learned material (e.g., short answer questions, fill-in-the-blank questions, etc.; examples of such learning tasks appear in DeWinstanley & Bjork, 2004 ; Hertel, 1989 ).

Cued-recall, short-answer, and fill-in-the-blank types of questions are prime examples of the types of test questions that require active retrieval processes on the part of students and, thus, can serve as tools for learning as well as assessment. Questions employing this format tend to be relatively easy for instructors to write and have traditionally been considered more favorably by educators than those employing a multiple-choice format. However, short-answer questions can take significantly more time to grade than most instructors have available. Fortunately, several studies conducted in the laboratory have shown that using competitive multiple-choice questions, where all the answer choices are plausible options, can be just as effective in improving students’ performance on subsequent cued-recall exams as practice tests using cued-recall or short-answer questions (Little et al., 2012 ). Furthermore, McDaniel and Little ( 2019 ) have suggested that competitive multiple-choice and short-answer quizzing can be equally effective in the classroom.

In sum, both short-answer questions and well-designed multiple-choice questions can serve as effective tools for enhancing learning. There is one consideration, however, that might indicate that the use of well-designed multiple-choice questions would be better for enhancing students’ learning than the use of short or cued-recall questions. In contrast to multiple-choice questions with competitive alternatives, short answer or cued-recall tests tend to focus attention only on the question at hand—possibly prompting individuals to try to ignore competing information—thus setting up conditions for the possibility of retrieval-induced forgetting.

Retrieval-induced forgetting refers to the finding that cued-recall tests, where students are given cues to recall information from memory, can sometimes impair their ability to later answer questions involving related information (Anderson et al., 1994 ). Although most often shown with cued-recall pairs, this effect has also sometimes been shown with educational materials (Chan, 2009 ; Little et al., 2011 , 2012 ). Thus, while cued-recall practice tests can be effective in enhancing memory for the practiced items, they may also lead to the inhibition or suppression of competitive, related, but non-practiced information, resulting in retrieval-induced forgetting of that information Footnote 1 . In other words, trying to recall specific information during a cued-recall practice test can unintentionally impair memory for competitive, related information, which can hinder students’ ability to answer questions about that related information in subsequent tests or assessments. Such results highlight the complex and sometimes counterintuitive nature of memory processes and the need for careful consideration of the types of practice tests used in educational settings.

Although including short-answer questions or more competitive multiple-choice tests in our instructional practices can be beneficial for our students’ learning, short-answer questions can be difficult and time-consuming to grade, and creating competitive multiple-choice tests can be difficult and time-consuming to create, particularly as compared to their non-competitive counterparts. Thus, even instructors who are eager to use short-answer or competitive multiple-choice tests are sometimes thwarted in their efforts to do so simply because of the difficulty in grading short-answer questions or in coming up with four or five competitive alternatives to include in each competitive multiple-choice question. Fortunately, recent work has demonstrated that true-false questions can have some of the same beneficial effects as competitive multiple-choice questions (Brabec et al., 2021 ).

Competitive true-false questions can produce better later performance for both previously asked questions and related questions. For example, suppose students have just had a lesson on Yellowstone Park that included a discussion of how geysers work and some of the famous geysers to be found there. A simple example of a competitive true-false question would be “True or False: Steamboat Geyser, not Castle Geyser, is the oldest geyser in Yellowstone Park.” To answer this question (which is false), students appear to retrieve both what they have learned about Steamboat Geyser and what they have learned about Castle Geyser, resulting in a better ability to answer questions about either one of these geysers on a later exam. Thus, true-false questions of this type, which are much easier to write, may offer similar benefits to multiple-choice questions with competitive alternatives.

In sum, multiple-choice questions with competitive alternatives, despite often being challenging and time-consuming to write, can improve learning outcomes by prompting students to recall information about all the alternatives, leading to retrieval practice benefits when answering later questions concerning any of the alternatives. However, if instructors do not have the time required to write competitive multiple-choice questions, competitive true-false questions can provide a solution—they too can increase the students’ learning of or access to the correct answers for both previously asked and related questions. Such findings indicate that when properly constructed, multiple-choice and true/false questions can both be powerful tools for promoting learning, challenging the notion that multiple-choice or true/false questions are inferior to cued-recall questions.

Should Students Take Tests Independently?

Some research has examined the benefits of group versus individual testing. For example, Cranney et al. ( 2009 ) had first-year college students watch a psychobiology video followed by a video-related activity and then a surprise test that they took individually. Looking at performance on the surprise test, the researchers compared the effectiveness of a group quiz, an individual quiz, a restudy condition, and a no-activity control condition. In general, results indicated that taking quizzes yielded better outcomes than not taking quizzes, and interestingly, the group quiz condition outperformed the individual quiz condition.

Collaborative testing can take various forms, and one such strategy involves the individual taking a first quiz, which is then followed by the opportunity to complete the same quiz in small groups, with the group performance contributing to some portion of the student’s grade (e.g., Rao et al., 2002 ). Using this type of procedure (i.e., an individual test followed by either an individual retest or a group retest), Gilley and Clarkston ( 2014 ) showed that the taking of a group retest was more effective for learning (as evaluated through a later individual test) than the individual taking the retest. Moreover, students generally enjoy collaborative testing and report reduced test anxiety (e.g., Lusk & Conklin, 2003 ). However, research on group testing versus individual testing has yielded mixed results, with some studies showing that group testing is not superior to individual testing for long-term retention and transfer (e.g., LoGiudice et al., 2015 ; Lusk & Conklin, 2003 ; Vojdanoska et al., 2010 ; Wissman & Rawson, 2018 ).

In certain conditions, group testing might even be worse, which aligns with the concept of collaborative inhibition, which occurs when groups of individuals collectively recall and remember information less accurately compared to if they had worked alone. To use collaborative testing in an educational context, it is essential to consider that collaborative inhibition is more likely to occur with open-ended retrieval, whereas tests with more specific cues like cued-recall or multiple-choice (which are common in educational contexts and especially in the review activities discussed in this commentary) are less likely to lead to collaborative inhibition (see Rajaram & Pereira-Pasarin, 2010 for a review of conditions promoting collaborative inhibition vs. facilitation; see also LoGiudice et al., 2015 for an educational review on collaborative testing). Taking all these findings into account, collaborative testing in the educational settings we have discussed may be advantageous and, at worst, is unlikely to be detrimental. Furthermore, it is also a procedure that appeals to students. Thus, incorporating collaborative retrieval activities, such as interactive games and test-taking, into one’s instructional teaching strategies can be a motivating way to engage students in practices that should facilitate their learning.

When Should We Give Tests?

Testing not only assesses what students know but also enhances their ability to learn new material in subsequent study sessions. Specifically, if students are asked to answer questions about a passage they are about to read or a lesson they are about to be given, their learning of the then-presented material is enhanced even if they are not able to answer any of those questions correctly (e.g., Arnold & McDermott, 2013 ; Hays et al., 2013 ; Richland et al., 2009 ). Thus, instructors should consider administering pre-tests prior to instruction to enhance long-term learning.

The extent of this pretesting advantage (see Bjork et al., 2015 ; Carpenter & Toftness, 2017 ; Carpenter et al., 2018 , 2023 ; Sana & Carpenter, 2023 ) can depend on the type of testing format used in the pretests. For example, using both multiple-choice and cued-recall test formats, Little and Bjork ( 2016 ) examined the effects of using tests as pretests (i.e., before studying) on the subsequent learning of information related to the correct answers on the pretest but not the specific correct answer itself. Overall, results revealed that multiple-choice pretesting was more effective than cued-recall pretesting, even after a delay. Specifically, both test types enhanced the learning of the tested content, but multiple-choice pretesting also enhanced the learning of the subsequently presented related information more so than did cued-recall pretesting. This may be because multiple-choice tests made students pay attention to both the correct answer and other related details when they came across them again (see Carpenter et al., 2023 for a review of the benefits of prequestions/pretests).

While the nature of the processes underlying the benefits of pretesting is still being debated, it is fairly widely agreed that a major reason for this benefit is that pretesting leads students to think more deeply and critically about the information that was pretested when it is later encountered during the presentation of the to-be-learned material, resulting in a more elaborate encoding of such material. For example, even for questions to which students do not already know the correct answer, if they are required to search their memories for possible answers to such questions before being allowed to search for them on the Internet, they will remember the found answers better than if they had been allowed to search for them immediately (Giebl et al., 2021 , 2022 ). Additionally, pretests can lead to a reduction in mind wandering (Pan et al., 2020 ) and enhance students’ capacity to maintain focus during lessons (Pan & Sana, 2021 ). Thus, instructors should consider giving tests before lessons as another method of using tests as a means for potentiating their students’ learning.

To summarize, considerable evidence suggests that pretests can enhance learning when they require students to attempt retrieval, even if the correct answer is not successfully recalled. As a result, we recommend the use of pretests given before the presentation of the to-be-learned material using either multiple-choice questions with competitive alternatives or competitive true-false questions, both of which have been shown to benefit subsequent learning outcomes for both the tested and related information.

What Issues Require More Research?

Although the effects of testing in the reviewed literature are robust, we need to do more to examine the generalizability of these benefits. For example, a recent review of 50 classroom experiments by Agarwal et al. ( 2021 ) demonstrated that retrieval practice yields medium to large benefits in most cases (57%), and the positive impact of retrieval practice on learning was observed across various education levels, content areas, experimental designs, final test delays, retrieval and final test formats, and timing of retrieval practice and feedback. However, the review also highlights that only a small fraction of experiments (6%) were conducted in non–Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (non-WEIRD) countries. Thus, while retrieval practice has been shown to offer substantial benefits for learning across many educational settings, whether such benefits accrue across even more diverse educational contexts remains to be determined. Additionally, more specific research needs to be conducted regarding how individual differences such as students’ prior knowledge, cultural backgrounds, and socioeconomic status influence how retrieval practice impacts learning. The results of such investigations should provide instructors with additional information regarding how testing might be used to foster more equitable educational experiences and outcomes for all students.

Testing and other forms of active learning have been consistently shown to benefit students of all abilities and can be particularly advantageous for capable but underperforming students (Haak et al., 2011 ). For example, a review conducted by Theobald et al. ( 2020 ) analyzed studies comparing the performance of underrepresented students (e.g., low-income, ethnic minority, or racial minority) to their overrepresented peers in both active learning and traditional instructional settings. Results revealed that active learning approaches tended to narrow the achievement gaps between these groups. Thus, incorporating question-answering activities as a form of active learning into one’s instructional practices would seem to hold the potential to be one way to promote greater equity in education and reduce achievement gaps among different student populations.

While the current commentary emphasizes the benefits of testing for learning and takes the position that these benefits may serve as a potential “equalizer” in enhancing learning outcomes for all students, there is a need for further investigation to understand the implications of testing in different academic disciplines, particularly in the context of addressing equity gaps. The existing research on equity gaps has predominantly focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, where the underrepresentation of certain groups, particularly women and minorities, remains a concern. It is essential to explore more thoroughly how testing might contribute to reducing these disparities and whether any such contributions might vary across different subject areas.

One critical aspect of future research should involve comparing the effectiveness of testing in both STEM and non-STEM disciplines. While the benefits of active learning and testing have been demonstrated across various subjects, it is essential to understand if the potential role of testing as an “equalizer” differs between these disciplines. Investigating the impact of testing on students’ academic achievement and retention rates in non-STEM fields will provide valuable insights into its broader applicability and potential to enhance learning outcomes more universally.

Furthermore, research exploring the combination of testing with other active learning strategies in different academic domains should be undertaken. While this commentary primarily focuses on the use of testing to involve students in active learning, it is important to acknowledge that active learning encompasses a range of instructional approaches. Future studies could examine how the integration of testing with other interactive activities influences student engagement, motivation, and learning in STEM and non-STEM disciplines. The discovery of potential synergistic effects when different active learning strategies are combined may lead to the development of more effective and comprehensive instructional practices.

How Can We Implement these Principles in the Classroom?

Again, while the administration of tests is already very common in the classroom as a means of assessing learning, we argue in this commentary that instructors should also be using tests to potentiate the learning of their students, and we have summarized the various ways in which doing so can be accomplished in Table 1 . For example, rather than the only tests in a course being a midterm and final exam—as illustrated on the left side of Fig.  1 , which represents a common organization of many courses—instructors should include many low-stakes exams whose main purpose is to enhance learning (as illustrated in the right side of Fig.  1 b). In short, the more tests we give our students on the information we are trying to teach them, whether given before or after learning, the more likely our students will be to remember that information later and be able to use it in different contexts.

In the classroom, an instructor has the option to employ various testing tools such as clickers or polling questions, review games (to be completed individually, collaboratively, or in a combination of both), and quizzes. For instance, one of the authors of this paper utilizes Google Forms to create collaborative quizzes for students. A notable advantage of using Google Forms is the instant availability of quiz answers to the instructor and instantaneous graphs of results that are easy to show students, allowing for immediate performance observation and feedback provision. They are also easy to use both in class and during online teaching sessions. This real-time feedback could enhance the learning experience for students and aid instructors in gauging students’ progress effectively.

In addition to introducing more desirable difficulties, such as tests or retrieval practice, into our instructional efforts, we also need to teach our students how to introduce desirable difficulties into their own study practices. With respect to their profiting from the testing effect, we should encourage our students to engage in self-testing as much as possible. Doing so can take the form of asking students to write down the main points from a chapter they have just read without looking back at it, summarizing the main points from a lecture right after class without looking at any notes, or getting together in small study groups where the students practice testing one another—an activity that many students already report doing (Wissman & Rawson, 2016 ). Students should also be encouraged to use any testing resources provided by their textbook. The more students engage in activities that test their learning or require them to generate aspects of the to-be-learned material, the more likely they are to begin to appreciate the benefits of testing (as well as other desirable difficulties) for enhancing their learning, even though engaging in desirable difficulties can require more effort on the part of the learner.

How Can We Overcome Barriers to Implementation?

Despite the numerous lab- and classroom-based studies demonstrating the benefits of desirable difficulties like the testing effect (see Rowland, 2014 ; Schwieren et al., 2017 for reviews), many obstacles are encountered when trying to introduce desirable difficulties into various types of educational settings—even when both instructors and students want to do so (see Bjork & Bjork, 2022 for a discussion of these obstacles). As the name indicates, desirable difficulties present difficulties or challenges for learners (e.g., it is much easier simply to restudy information than to test yourself on it) and they can often slow down the rate at which one’s performance improves, which can be mistakenly interpreted by students (and instructors as well) as impairing the learning process. Moreover, some desirable difficulties defy conventional wisdom and can seem at odds with the types of teaching or instruction with which both students and instructors have become familiar. Lastly, students may not want to change their approach to the learning process if they have had prior academic success (i.e., they have been able to earn good grades) without using desirable difficulties.

Instructors may have reservations about incorporating more testing into their teaching for reasons other than those just discussed. Two main additional reasons seem to be: (a) they fear it takes away valuable time that could be used for content delivery or restudying; and (b) they worry about the increased workload involved in implementing testing, such as writing more exams, incorporating polling questions, and grading. However, research has consistently demonstrated that testing actually enhances learning more than control conditions that match time on task (e.g., Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b ). In other words, the time invested in testing is not wasted but rather contributes significantly to improved learning outcomes.

To facilitate the implementation of testing and other effective strategies, we recommend the use of available resources and technologies that can streamline the process. For instance, employing digital tools like quiz generators or learning management systems as well as the test banks provided with many textbooks can significantly reduce the burden of test preparation and grading, allowing instructors to focus on other aspects of their teaching. Additionally, providing instructors with clear guidelines, sample questions, and templates for creating tests can expedite the process and make it more manageable.

Despite the potential increase in the instructors’ workload, we believe that the benefits to our students make the effort worthwhile. The incorporation of more testing and interactive elements in teaching fosters active learning and enhances students’ retention and comprehension of the material. While instructors may feel the need to update higher-stakes assessments each semester to maintain their integrity and avoid potential cheating, the same level of urgency may not be necessary for lower-stakes assessments like polling and review games. Once these assessment questions are integrated into the lecture materials, instructors may find that they require minimal additional work from semester to semester. As a result, the time and effort invested in creating these interactive assessments can prove to be a valuable and sustainable resource in the long run, benefiting both instructors and students alike. Ultimately, the positive impact on students’ academic performance and long-term learning justifies the additional effort required by instructors.

Conclusions

As we try to educate both more students and a broader range of students than we have traditionally done in the past, we believe it is essential for instructors to give students the knowledge and ability to incorporate desirable difficulties into their study strategies and their self-guided learning activities. Among other reasons, there is growing evidence that tasks involving active learning—of which we believe testing is one—can serve as an equalizer for our students (e.g., Haak et al., 2011 ; Theobald et al., 2020 ). That is, regardless of the many individual differences among students and the great variance in the level of preparation students may have at the start of any educational endeavor, the knowledge of how to use desirable difficulties to improve their study strategies can enable all students to succeed. We hope that the present commentary can help make both students and instructors more aware of the benefits of testing for achieving learning that is both long-lasting and transferable, which is the ultimate goal of education.

Note that retrieval-induced forgetting with educational materials depends upon various factors, one of which is a competitive relationship between the tested and related content. When the tested and related content is not competitive, cued-recall testing on some information can improve recall of other information (see Anderson & Biddle, 1975 ; Hamaker, 1986 , for a review).

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Murphy, D.H., Little, J.L. & Bjork, E.L. The Value of Using Tests in Education as Tools for Learning—Not Just for Assessment. Educ Psychol Rev 35 , 89 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09808-3

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• Essay Exams

Essay exams provide opportunities to evaluate students’ reasoning skills such as the ability to compare and contrast concepts, justify a position on a topic, interpret cases from the perspective of different theories or models, evaluate a claim or assertion with evidence, design an experiment, and other higher level cognitive skills. They can reveal if students understand the theory behind course material or how different concepts and theories relate to each other. 

+ Advantages and Challenges of essay exams

Advantages:

• Can be used to measure higher order cognitive skills
• Takes relatively less time to write questions
• Difficult for respondents to get correct answers by guessing

Challenges:

• Can be time consuming to administer and to score
• Can be challenging to identify measurable, reliable criteria for assessing student responses
• Limited range of content can be sampled during any one testing period
• Timed exams in general add stress unrelated to a student's mastery of the material

+ Creating an essay exam

• Limit the use of essay questions to learning aims that require learners to share their thinking processes, connect and analyze information, and communicate their understanding for a specific purpose. 
• Write each item so that students clearly understand the specific task and what deliverables are required for a complete answer (e.g. diagram, amount of evidence, number of examples).
• Indicate the relative amount of time and effort students should spend on each essay item, for example “2 – 3 sentences should suffice for this question”.
• Consider using several narrowly focused items rather than one broad item.
• Consider offering students choice among essay questions, while ensuring that all learning aims are assessed.

When designing essay exams, consider the reasoning skills you want to assess in your students. The following table lists different skills to measure with example prompts to guide assessment questions. 

+ Preparing students for an essay exam

Adapted from Piontek, 2008

Prior to the essay exam

• Administer a formative assessment that asks students to do a brief write on a question similar to one you will use on an exam and provide them with feedback on their responses.
• Provide students with examples of essay responses that do and do not meet your criteria and standards. 
• Provide students with the learning aims they will be responsible for mastering to help them focus their preparation appropriately.
• Have students apply the scoring rubric to sample essay responses and provide them with feedback on their work.

Resource video : 2-minute video description of a formative assessment that helps prepare students for an essay exam. 

+ Administering an essay exam

• Provide adequate time for students to take the assessment. A strategy some instructors use is to time themselves answering the exam questions completely and then multiply that time by 3-4.
• Endeavor to create a distraction-free environment.
• Review the suggestions for informal accommodations for multilingual learners , which may be helpful in setting up an essay exam for all learners.

+ Grading an essay exam

To ensure essays are graded fairly and without bias:

• Outline what constitutes an acceptable answer (criteria for knowledge and skills).
• Select an appropriate scoring method based on the criteria.
• Clarify the role of writing mechanics and other factors independent of the learning aims being measured.
• Share with students ahead of time.
• Use a systematic process for scoring each essay item.  For instance, score all responses to a single question in one setting.
• Anonymize student work (if possible) to ensure fairer and more objective feedback. For example students could use their student ID number in place of their name.

+ References & Resources

• For more information on setting criteria, preparing students, and grading essay exams read:  Boye, A. (2019) Writing Better Essay Exams , IDEA paper #76.
• For more detailed descriptions of how to develop and score essay exams read: Piontek, M.E. (2008). Best Practices for Designing and Grading Exams, CRLT Occasional Paper # 24.

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Essay Exams

What this handout is about.

At some time in your undergraduate career, you’re going to have to write an essay exam. This thought can inspire a fair amount of fear: we struggle enough with essays when they aren’t timed events based on unknown questions. The goal of this handout is to give you some easy and effective strategies that will help you take control of the situation and do your best.

Why do instructors give essay exams?

Essay exams are a useful tool for finding out if you can sort through a large body of information, figure out what is important, and explain why it is important. Essay exams challenge you to come up with key course ideas and put them in your own words and to use the interpretive or analytical skills you’ve practiced in the course. Instructors want to see whether:

• You understand concepts that provide the basis for the course
• You can use those concepts to interpret specific materials
• You can make connections, see relationships, draw comparisons and contrasts
• You can synthesize diverse information in support of an original assertion
• You can justify your own evaluations based on appropriate criteria
• You can argue your own opinions with convincing evidence
• You can think critically and analytically about a subject

What essay questions require

Exam questions can reach pretty far into the course materials, so you cannot hope to do well on them if you do not keep up with the readings and assignments from the beginning of the course. The most successful essay exam takers are prepared for anything reasonable, and they probably have some intelligent guesses about the content of the exam before they take it. How can you be a prepared exam taker? Try some of the following suggestions during the semester:

• Do the reading as the syllabus dictates; keeping up with the reading while the related concepts are being discussed in class saves you double the effort later.
• Go to lectures (and put away your phone, the newspaper, and that crossword puzzle!).
• Take careful notes that you’ll understand months later. If this is not your strong suit or the conventions for a particular discipline are different from what you are used to, ask your TA or the Learning Center for advice.
• Participate in your discussion sections; this will help you absorb the material better so you don’t have to study as hard.
• Organize small study groups with classmates to explore and review course materials throughout the semester. Others will catch things you might miss even when paying attention. This is not cheating. As long as what you write on the essay is your own work, formulating ideas and sharing notes is okay. In fact, it is a big part of the learning process.
• As an exam approaches, find out what you can about the form it will take. This will help you forecast the questions that will be on the exam, and prepare for them.

These suggestions will save you lots of time and misery later. Remember that you can’t cram weeks of information into a single day or night of study. So why put yourself in that position?

Now let’s focus on studying for the exam. You’ll notice the following suggestions are all based on organizing your study materials into manageable chunks of related material. If you have a plan of attack, you’ll feel more confident and your answers will be more clear. Here are some tips: 

• Don’t just memorize aimlessly; clarify the important issues of the course and use these issues to focus your understanding of specific facts and particular readings.
• Try to organize and prioritize the information into a thematic pattern. Look at what you’ve studied and find a way to put things into related groups. Find the fundamental ideas that have been emphasized throughout the course and organize your notes into broad categories. Think about how different categories relate to each other.
• Find out what you don’t know, but need to know, by making up test questions and trying to answer them. Studying in groups helps as well.

Taking the exam

Read the exam carefully.

• If you are given the entire exam at once and can determine your approach on your own, read the entire exam before you get started.
• Look at how many points each part earns you, and find hints for how long your answers should be.
• Figure out how much time you have and how best to use it. Write down the actual clock time that you expect to take in each section, and stick to it. This will help you avoid spending all your time on only one section. One strategy is to divide the available time according to percentage worth of the question. You don’t want to spend half of your time on something that is only worth one tenth of the total points.
• As you read, make tentative choices of the questions you will answer (if you have a choice). Don’t just answer the first essay question you encounter. Instead, read through all of the options. Jot down really brief ideas for each question before deciding.
• Remember that the easiest-looking question is not always as easy as it looks. Focus your attention on questions for which you can explain your answer most thoroughly, rather than settle on questions where you know the answer but can’t say why.

Analyze the questions

• Decide what you are being asked to do. If you skim the question to find the main “topic” and then rush to grasp any related ideas you can recall, you may become flustered, lose concentration, and even go blank. Try looking closely at what the question is directing you to do, and try to understand the sort of writing that will be required.
• Focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.
• Look at the active verbs in the assignment—they tell you what you should be doing. We’ve included some of these below, with some suggestions on what they might mean. (For help with this sort of detective work, see the Writing Center handout titled Reading Assignments.)

Information words, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject. Information words may include:

• define—give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning.
• explain why/how—give reasons why or examples of how something happened.
• illustrate—give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject.
• summarize—briefly cover the important ideas you learned about the subject.
• trace—outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form.
• research—gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you’ve found.

Relation words ask you to demonstrate how things are connected. Relation words may include:

• compare—show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different).
• contrast—show how two or more things are dissimilar.
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation.
• cause—show how one event or series of events made something else happen.
• relate—show or describe the connections between things.

Interpretation words ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Don’t see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation. Interpretation words may include:

• prove, justify—give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth.
• evaluate, respond, assess—state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons (you may want to compare your subject to something else).
• support—give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe).
• synthesize—put two or more things together that haven’t been put together before; don’t just summarize one and then the other, and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together (as opposed to compare and contrast—see above).
• analyze—look closely at the components of something to figure out how it works, what it might mean, or why it is important.
• argue—take a side and defend it (with proof) against the other side.

Plan your answers

Think about your time again. How much planning time you should take depends on how much time you have for each question and how many points each question is worth. Here are some general guidelines: 

• For short-answer definitions and identifications, just take a few seconds. Skip over any you don’t recognize fairly quickly, and come back to them when another question jogs your memory.
• For answers that require a paragraph or two, jot down several important ideas or specific examples that help to focus your thoughts.
• For longer answers, you will need to develop a much more definite strategy of organization. You only have time for one draft, so allow a reasonable amount of time—as much as a quarter of the time you’ve allotted for the question—for making notes, determining a thesis, and developing an outline.
• For questions with several parts (different requests or directions, a sequence of questions), make a list of the parts so that you do not miss or minimize one part. One way to be sure you answer them all is to number them in the question and in your outline.
• You may have to try two or three outlines or clusters before you hit on a workable plan. But be realistic—you want a plan you can develop within the limited time allotted for your answer. Your outline will have to be selective—not everything you know, but what you know that you can state clearly and keep to the point in the time available.

Again, focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.

Writing your answers

As with planning, your strategy for writing depends on the length of your answer:

• For short identifications and definitions, it is usually best to start with a general identifying statement and then move on to describe specific applications or explanations. Two sentences will almost always suffice, but make sure they are complete sentences. Find out whether the instructor wants definition alone, or definition and significance. Why is the identification term or object important?
• For longer answers, begin by stating your forecasting statement or thesis clearly and explicitly. Strive for focus, simplicity, and clarity. In stating your point and developing your answers, you may want to use important course vocabulary words from the question. For example, if the question is, “How does wisteria function as a representation of memory in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom?” you may want to use the words wisteria, representation, memory, and Faulkner) in your thesis statement and answer. Use these important words or concepts throughout the answer.
• If you have devised a promising outline for your answer, then you will be able to forecast your overall plan and its subpoints in your opening sentence. Forecasting impresses readers and has the very practical advantage of making your answer easier to read. Also, if you don’t finish writing, it tells your reader what you would have said if you had finished (and may get you partial points).
• You might want to use briefer paragraphs than you ordinarily do and signal clear relations between paragraphs with transition phrases or sentences.
• As you move ahead with the writing, you may think of new subpoints or ideas to include in the essay. Stop briefly to make a note of these on your original outline. If they are most appropriately inserted in a section you’ve already written, write them neatly in the margin, at the top of the page, or on the last page, with arrows or marks to alert the reader to where they fit in your answer. Be as neat and clear as possible.
• Don’t pad your answer with irrelevancies and repetitions just to fill up space. Within the time available, write a comprehensive, specific answer.
• Watch the clock carefully to ensure that you do not spend too much time on one answer. You must be realistic about the time constraints of an essay exam. If you write one dazzling answer on an exam with three equally-weighted required questions, you earn only 33 points—not enough to pass at most colleges. This may seem unfair, but keep in mind that instructors plan exams to be reasonably comprehensive. They want you to write about the course materials in two or three or more ways, not just one way. Hint: if you finish a half-hour essay in 10 minutes, you may need to develop some of your ideas more fully.
• If you run out of time when you are writing an answer, jot down the remaining main ideas from your outline, just to show that you know the material and with more time could have continued your exposition.
• Double-space to leave room for additions, and strike through errors or changes with one straight line (avoid erasing or scribbling over). Keep things as clean as possible. You never know what will earn you partial credit.
• Write legibly and proofread. Remember that your instructor will likely be reading a large pile of exams. The more difficult they are to read, the more exasperated the instructor might become. Your instructor also cannot give you credit for what they cannot understand. A few minutes of careful proofreading can improve your grade.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind in writing essay exams is that you have a limited amount of time and space in which to get across the knowledge you have acquired and your ability to use it. Essay exams are not the place to be subtle or vague. It’s okay to have an obvious structure, even the five-paragraph essay format you may have been taught in high school. Introduce your main idea, have several paragraphs of support—each with a single point defended by specific examples, and conclude with a restatement of your main point and its significance.

Some physiological tips

Just think—we expect athletes to practice constantly and use everything in their abilities and situations in order to achieve success. Yet, somehow many students are convinced that one day’s worth of studying, no sleep, and some well-placed compliments (“Gee, Dr. So-and-so, I really enjoyed your last lecture”) are good preparation for a test. Essay exams are like any other testing situation in life: you’ll do best if you are prepared for what is expected of you, have practiced doing it before, and have arrived in the best shape to do it. You may not want to believe this, but it’s true: a good night’s sleep and a relaxed mind and body can do as much or more for you as any last-minute cram session. Colleges abound with tales of woe about students who slept through exams because they stayed up all night, wrote an essay on the wrong topic, forgot everything they studied, or freaked out in the exam and hyperventilated. If you are rested, breathing normally, and have brought along some healthy, energy-boosting snacks that you can eat or drink quietly, you are in a much better position to do a good job on the test. You aren’t going to write a good essay on something you figured out at 4 a.m. that morning. If you prepare yourself well throughout the semester, you don’t risk your whole grade on an overloaded, undernourished brain.

If for some reason you get yourself into this situation, take a minute every once in a while during the test to breathe deeply, stretch, and clear your brain. You need to be especially aware of the likelihood of errors, so check your essays thoroughly before you hand them in to make sure they answer the right questions and don’t have big oversights or mistakes (like saying “Hitler” when you really mean “Churchill”).

If you tend to go blank during exams, try studying in the same classroom in which the test will be given. Some research suggests that people attach ideas to their surroundings, so it might jog your memory to see the same things you were looking at while you studied.

Try good luck charms. Bring in something you associate with success or the support of your loved ones, and use it as a psychological boost.

Take all of the time you’ve been allotted. Reread, rework, and rethink your answers if you have extra time at the end, rather than giving up and handing the exam in the minute you’ve written your last sentence. Use every advantage you are given.

Remember that instructors do not want to see you trip up—they want to see you do well. With this in mind, try to relax and just do the best you can. The more you panic, the more mistakes you are liable to make. Put the test in perspective: will you die from a poor performance? Will you lose all of your friends? Will your entire future be destroyed? Remember: it’s just a test.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. 2016. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing , 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Fowler, Ramsay H., and Jane E. Aaron. 2016. The Little, Brown Handbook , 13th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Gefvert, Constance J. 1988. The Confident Writer: A Norton Handbook , 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Kirszner, Laurie G. 1988. Writing: A College Rhetoric , 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Woodman, Leonara, and Thomas P. Adler. 1988. The Writer’s Choices , 2nd ed. Northbrook, Illinois: Scott Foresman.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Essay on Importance of Examination

Students are often asked to write an essay on Importance of Examination in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Importance of Examination

Introduction.

Examinations play a crucial role in a student’s life. They are not just about grades but a way to test knowledge.

Knowledge Evaluation

Examinations help in evaluating what students have learned. They measure the understanding and ability to recall information.

Time Management Skills

Exams teach time management. Students learn to prioritize tasks, which is a valuable skill for the future.

Preparation for Future

Examinations prepare students for future challenges. They instill discipline and the ability to perform under pressure.

In conclusion, exams are essential in shaping a student’s knowledge, skills, and future.

Also check:

• Paragraph on Importance of Examination
• Speech on Importance of Examination

250 Words Essay on Importance of Examination

Examinations, often viewed with dread, are an integral part of our educational system, serving as a yardstick to measure a student’s comprehension of subjects. They are more than just a series of tests; they are pivotal in shaping the knowledge, skills, and personality of students.

The Role of Examinations

Examinations are designed to assess the understanding, analytical abilities, and problem-solving skills of students in various subjects. They foster a sense of discipline, punctuality, and consistency in studying. Moreover, they prepare students to face challenges and perform under pressure, thereby developing resilience and perseverance.

Examinations and Future Prospects

Examinations also play a significant role in shaping one’s career. The grades and scores obtained in these tests often determine the opportunities for higher studies and job prospects. They serve as a gateway to prestigious institutions and competitive professional fields.

Examinations as a Learning Tool

Examinations encourage students to delve deeper into their course material, promoting intensive and extensive learning. They also act as a feedback mechanism, helping students identify their strengths and areas of improvement, thus guiding them in their learning process.

While examinations have their drawbacks, such as inducing stress and promoting rote learning, their importance in the educational system cannot be undermined. They are essential in assessing a student’s understanding, shaping their learning, and preparing them for the future. Therefore, examinations should be viewed not as a cause of fear, but as an opportunity for self-improvement and growth.

500 Words Essay on Importance of Examination

Examinations are a crucial component of any educational system, acting as a yardstick to evaluate a student’s understanding of the subjects. They are more than just a series of tests; they are a means of establishing an individual’s knowledge and skills, thus playing a vital role in shaping a person’s career.

Examinations serve multiple purposes. They are a way to assess students’ comprehension of the material, their ability to apply what they’ve learned, and their capacity to think critically about the subject matter. Examinations also motivate students to study, instilling a sense of discipline and responsibility. They encourage students to review and revise the course content, thereby reinforcing their learning.

Examinations and Skill Development

Examinations are not just about rote memorization; they also promote various skills. They encourage time management, problem-solving, and analytical abilities. The pressure to perform well in an examination pushes students to strategize their study methods, prioritize their tasks, and manage their time effectively. Moreover, exams foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills as students need to understand, analyze, and solve complex problems.

Examinations as a Benchmark

Examinations provide a benchmark for identifying a student’s strengths and weaknesses. They help educators understand where a student stands acadically. This feedback can be used to guide future teaching strategies and learning interventions. Examinations also offer a comparative platform where students can be evaluated against a standard set of criteria, ensuring fairness and uniformity.

Examinations and Career Opportunities

Examinations open up a world of opportunities. Many professional fields and higher education institutions rely on examination scores to select candidates. A good performance in these exams often translates to better opportunities, be it in terms of college admissions, scholarships, or job placements.

Examinations and Lifelong Learning

Examinations instill a lifelong learning attitude in students. The skills developed during examination preparation, such as self-discipline, time management, and critical thinking, are not just academic skills; they are life skills that remain beneficial long after the exams are over.

Despite the stress and anxiety often associated with examinations, their importance cannot be undermined. They are a critical part of the educational system, serving as a measure of a student’s understanding, skills, and potential. Examinations drive learning, foster skill development, provide benchmarks, and open up opportunities. They are a stepping stone towards building a successful career and instilling a lifelong learning attitude.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on If There Were No Examination
• Essay on How to Overcome Exam Fear
• Essay on Exam Stress

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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BUT ARE EXAMS THE TRUE TEST OF KNOWLEDGE?

Again, the first semester examinations are upon us and as always, they will come and go. Some students are ready, while many others are not. Whether or not students are fully prepared, exams are inevitable. Exams have since forever been a tool to test the knowledge of students. Exams provide a means for thorough assessment and allows he teacher know what areas to put more effort. It improves learning and increases a student’s ability to take on new information. In some cases where feedback is given, the student’s ability to identify errors and improve on mistakes is increased. Exams also ensure that students work hard to get good grades. However, are exams the true test of Knowledge? Ninety percent of the time, some students only put efforts into getting above the pass mark, they therefore do not necessarily study to acquire knowledge. This is particularly evident in the inability of most students to recall what they learnt the previous year, after moving to a new class. This phenomenon is very common amongst students and one major cause of this is the pressure exams put on students. Students are pressurized into performing well, regardless of the circumstance, or risk grave consequences that could mean repeating a class or re-taking the subject. If at all the problem of pressured studying is dealt with and a student truly studies to acquire knowledge, what happens if situations like sickness, emergency, absence—which are out of the student’s control happen? Regardless of a student’s preparation, a flawed exam translates to a flawed result. One major problem that arises from tis is that a student who performs poorly in an exam is thought unintelligent. Where then do we draw the line? Examinations will still not be a true test of knowledge, even in the absence of the first two problems. Perhaps a student has studies rightly and delivered well, such student is still at the mercy of the examiner who might be either happy or sad when scoring the exam. When all conditions for success has been met, a student may still be denied success because the examiner was not in a very good mood while marking. Examinations have their good and bad and like democracy, everyone is stuck with it, even though it is not a perfect means of testing a student’s ability— the same way countries still practice democracy, despite its imperfections.

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The Best Essay on The Topic Examinations

Examinations.

Sir Winston Churchill  said,

“Examinations were a great trial for me.”

It is a fact that our system of education is examination-ridden. It is almost impossible to deny their most dominant role as a test of success. It is the center of studies. Examination simply means the test of ability. However, for some years, they have been a topic of debate. Their importance and effectiveness have been called into question. The most significant object is that examinations are not a real test of knowledge but a test of ignorance. But on the whole, we can say that in spite of all the objections and shortcomings, examinations are a necessary evil that cannot be avoided.

Read Also: The Best Essay on The Topic Unemployment

All of us agree that the examinations are not the real test of a student’s intelligence. The standard of judgment depends more on the mood of the examiner than on any  specific or scientific rules and regulations, so the examinations are not foolproof tests. It is, on the other hand, a faulty way of judging.

Examination Essay

The marking of papers is the most essential part of the examination system. The allocation of marks depends on the individual examiner. When judging the ability of examination answers, two different examiners will assign different marks to the same answer. Some examiners are lenient, while others are very strict. In this way, marking varies from person to person.

Read also: Essay on Science and Technology Blessing or Curse

Examinations are a game of chance. The success is so uncertain that the student remains confused. They are never sure, of their success. There are always doubts in their minds, success does not depend on complete preparation. Even with full preparation, students may not succeed or secure good marks. On the other hand, a student with less preparation may easily succeed. So, examinations prove to be a lottery.

Examinations are mostly a test of nerves. All of us know that all examinations have limitations in terms of time and place. A student is tested in a bad place in a bad manner. The atmosphere of the examination room is never satisfactory. A simple question can be raised: how can a student’s hard work of one or two years be judged in just three hours? The invigilators also sometimes prove disturbing. So examinations are generally unnerving.

Read Also: Personal Reflective Essay

Examinations are a test of memory. They are useful for unintelligent students. In other words, examinations are useful for crammers and harmful for intelligent students. As a matter of fact, such examinations are a curse for able students. Examinations of this kind discourage hard work. They encourage selective study and some special tricks to get through them. So, difference between learned and ignorant can be made

Conclusion:

In the end, we can say that the examination system is unnatural and unscientific. There are many shortcomings in it, but all that does not at all mean that there should be no examinations. There has to be some way of judging the ability of students, so proper changes in the faulty system are required. Examinations should always be faultless, foolproof, and scientific.

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Importance of Examination Essay in English [With PDF]

Hello Readers, today in this essay presentation we are going to see an essay on importance of examination in a student’s life.

An examination is an assessment aimed at measuring students’ skills, aptitude, or knowledge in one or more topics of study. A test can be administered either on paper or verbally.

Students usually become nervous and anxious when they anticipate taking an examination. Exams are an essential tool in learning. The following reasons discuss why examination tests are important

Exams are a motivator for students to learn more 

Examinations compel students to do more research on topics learned in class so that they can understand the given topic in detail.

A student who is undertaking a practical course like mechanical engineering would do more practice in the field, for example, repairing the engine of a car, so that they can understand better the theoretical explanation of doing something.

A student will regularly revise their notes until they fully internalize and understand course concepts. Examinations require students to be logical and critical thinkers in answering questions.

In writing answers, the examiner will be keen to see if the student will present their ideas creatively and logically. The student will then have to do a lot of studying during their free time so that when the time comes for them to write down, the examination content will flow naturally.

Examination test students’ understanding of concepts 

Every student is unique in their particular way. Each student understands concepts taught in class differently.

Some students are fast learners, others are average, and others are slow learners.

A teacher in a preschool will give an examination to the students to determine the children’s’ understanding of concepts. Once done marking the teacher will know each Childs’ academic strength.

In return help, the teacher decides on the best approach to use in teaching the students.

The teacher will determine how much more effort she or he will require to put in place to help the students understand concepts clearly.

The students’ performance influences this in a given test. A teacher gets to know what areas of study the students found interesting and those that were hard to comprehend.

Examinations encourage healthy competition among students

With the absence of exams, students would not be compelled to compete academically among themselves. Examinations examination promotes healthy competition among themselves. It is a dream of most university students to be in the top class in their field of study.

Being at the top boosts the students’ self-confidence and will study very hard to remain at the top. The second will spend more time studying to outshine the top student. This competition is good because it forces students to explore more and acquire more knowledge.

Teachers grade students based on how they perform on the test given. A student would want to be noticed as the best performer in class in so doing students compete for that position and also recognition.

Examinations instil discipline in students 

A student in school knows they will undertake a test at one time during their academic year. A learner, therefore, will remain focused on their studies because they would not want to miss classes or assignments given fearing they will fail in their examination. Imagine a system of education without examination.

Students would lose interest and focus on their studies. School is not a school without examinations because students will not see the importance of studying since there will be no grading or assignment administered to them.

Let me know in the comment section what you think about the Essay on Importance of Examination if you have some of your points of view do share in the comment section. Thank you!

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Ielts essay # 1156 - traditional examination are not often true to student’s ability, ielts writing task 2/ ielts essay:, during the last twenty years, the assessment of students has undergone a major transformation. many educational institutions have shifted their focus from traditional examination towards a variety of innovative assessment techniques, as they believe traditional examination results are not often true to student’s ability..

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Essay Test Preparation Tips and Strategies

Essay test questions can be very intimidating, but they can also be very rewarding. Unlike other types of exams (i.e., multiple choice, true or false, etc.) essay tests allow you develop an answer based on your understanding or knowledge.

If you’ve studied all semester, understand the course concepts, and have reviewed prior to the test, the following strategies can help you improve your performance on essay tests and exams.

Strategies to Help You Improve Your Performance on Essay Tests and Exams

Read the directions.

Reading the directions seems so obvious. Unfortunately, it’s still one of the biggest test taking mistakes students make. Before answering an essay question, thoroughly read the instructions. Do not jump to the answer without being sure of what exactly the question is asking. In many cases, the teacher is looking for specific types of responses. Never assume you know what is being asked, or what is required, until you’ve read the entire question.

Ask for clarification

Read essay questions in their entirety before preparing an answer. If the instructions are unclear, or you simply don’t understand a question, ask the teacher for clarification. Chances are if you’re confused so is someone else. Never be scared to ask for clarification from your teacher or instructor.

Provide detail

Provide as many details and specific examples when answering an essay question as you can. Teachers are usually looking for very specific responses to see whether or not you’ve learned the material. The more relevant detail you provide, the higher grade is likely to be. However, only include correct, accurate and relevant information. Including irrelevant “filler” that doesn’t support your answer will likely lower your grade.

Budget your time

Manage your time wisely when answering essay questions so you are able answer all the questions, not just the easy or hard ones. If you finish your test before time is up, go back and review your answers and provide additional details.

We recommend answering those essay questions you’re most familiar with first and then tackling more challenging questions after. It’s also not uncommon on essay tests for some questions to be worth more than others. When budgeting your time, make sure to allocate more time to those questions that are worth the most.

Follow the instructions

When a question is only requiring facts, be sure to avoid sharing opinions. Only provide the information the instructions request. It’s important to provide an answer that matches the type of essay question being asked. You’ll find a list of common types of essay questions at the bottom of this page.

In your answers, get to the point and be very clear. It is generally best to be as concise as possible. If you provide numerous facts or details, be sure they’re related to the question. A typical essay answer should be between 200 and 800 words (2-8 paragraphs) but more isn’t necessarily better. Focus on substance over quantity.

Write clearly and legibly

Be sure your essays are legible and easy to understand. If a teacher has a difficult time reading or understanding what you’ve written, you could receive a lower score.

Get organized

Organize your thoughts before answering your essay question. We even recommend developing a short outline before preparing your answer. This strategy will help you save time and keep your essay organized. Organizing your thoughts and preparing a short outline will allow you to write more clearly and concisely.

Get to the point – Focus on substance

Only spend time answering the question and keep your essays focused. An overly long introduction and conclusion can be unnecessary. If your essay does not thoroughly answer the question and provide substance, a well developed introduction or conclusion will do you no good.

Use paragraphs to separate ideas

When developing your essay, keep main ideas and other important details separated with paragraphs. An essay response should have three parts: the introduction; the body; and the conclusion. The introduction is typically one paragraph, as is the conclusion. The body of the essay usually consists of 2 to 6 paragraphs depending on the type of essay and the information being presented.

Go back and review

If time permits, review your answers and make changes if necessary. Make sure you employed correct grammar and that your essays are well written. It’s not uncommon to make silly mistakes your first time through your essay. Reviewing your work is always a good idea.

Approximate

When you are unsure of specific dates, just approximate dates. For example, if you know an event occurred sometime during the 1820’s, then just write, “in the early 1800’s.”

Common Question Types on Essay Exams

Being able to identify and becoming familiar with the most common types of essay test questions is key to improving performance on essay exams. The following are 5 of the most common question types you’ll find on essay exams.

1. Identify

Identify essay questions ask for short, concise answers and typically do not require a fully developed essay.

• Ask yourself: “What is the idea or concept in question?”, “What are the main characteristics?”, “What does this mean?”
• Keywords to look for: Summarize, List, Describe, Define, Enumerate, State
• Example question: “Define what is meant by ‘separation of church and state.'”

Explain essay questions require a full-length essay with a fully developed response that provides ample supporting detail.

• Ask yourself: “What are the main points?”, “Why is this the case?”
• Keywords to look for: Discuss, Explain, Analyze, Illustrate
• Example question: “Discuss the differences between the political views of democrats and republicans. Use specific examples from each party’s 2017 presidential campaign to argue which views are more in line with U.S. national interests.”

Compare essay questions require an analysis in essay form which focuses on similarities, differences, and connections between specific ideas or concepts.

• Ask yourself: “What are the main concepts or ideas?”, “What are the similarities?”, “What are the differences?”
• Keywords to look for: Compare, Contrast, Relate
• Example question: “Compare the value of attending a community college to the value of attending a 4-year university. Which would you rather attend?”

Argue essay questions require you to form an opinion or take a position on an issue and defend your position against alternative positions using arguments backed by analysis and information.

• Ask yourself: “Is this position correct?”, “Why is this issue true?”
• Keywords to look for: Prove, Justify
• Example question: “Argue whether robotics will replace blue collar manufacturing jobs in the next ten years.”

Assess essay questions involve assessing an issue, idea or question by describing acceptable criteria and defending a position/judgment on the issue.

• Ask yourself: “What is the main idea/issue and what does it mean?”, “Why is the issue important?”, “What are its strengths?”, “What are the weaknesses?”
• Keywords to look for: Evaluate, Criticize, Evaluate, Interpret
• Example question: “With respect to U.S. national security, evaluate the benefit of constructing a wall along the southern border of the United States of America.”

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Essay on Examination

Examination is a test of a person’s capacity, knowledge, and ability. It proves what standard of learning a person has acquired during a specific period of time in a specific syllabus. It is the most hated and most shunned things for some students who never like to indulge in it with pleasure until they have a charm of acquiring a degree. Otherwise, they compare it with a nightmare.

Yet examinations are not totally devoid of good. There is a saying about it.

Trials are a veritable curse but they have their use.

Education System and Exam

The system of education of mostly examination ridden which aims at the test of achievement and success. The examination is the center of studies and hard work. It is a motivating force to work.

Its importance and efficacy have been called in question. The most important point is that examinations are not the real test of knowledge and understanding. They are the test of ignorance or cramming. Still, we can say that examinations are necessary evil which cannot be avoided.

Uses of Examination

Difference between genius and dunce.

Examinations have many uses. They help us find the most efficient individual among many. we can distinguish between the scholar and the dullard, the genius and the dunce. In this way, they help us discriminate between the genuine gold and the sparkling brass.

Compel to work hard

Secondly, the examinations compel us to work hard. the careless students become serious near the examinations. They buy books they had no intention to buy and gird up their loins.

It is a fact that many students read for the sake of examinations. Thus, examinations are a very effective way of goading students to read.

Fitness for promotion to a higher grade/class

Thirdly, examinations are proof and guarantee of man’s efficiency. They provide us a proof of the fitness of the student for promotion to a higher grade/class. An employer can safely entrust a job to the degree holder. Without a degree, no one will higher his services. The factories, industries or mills cannot allow the person to perform a technical task without a specific degree/course.

Way to attain degrees / diplomas

Similarly, we do not ask everyone to prescribe medicine for us. Only the person holding a degree enjoys the right to operate upon our body. Hence, if we abolish examinations, we shall have to abolish degrees or diplomas.

Abuses of examinations

Examinations have certain abuses as well. Many students consider it a curse. They consider them to be a game of chance. The students are never sure of their success. There are always doubts in their minds. Success does not depend upon preparation. Even a student with selected studies may pass and the student with thorough preparation may fail.

Uncertainty of success

Some students keep studying the whole session but fail. On the other hand, many others who buy help books and cheap notes near the examinations and cram a few questions, pass. Such examinations are a curse for the shining students.

Test of memory

The examinations are a test of nerves. All examinations have a limit of time and place. A student is tested at a bad place and in a bad manner. The question arises how a student’s hard work and worth for a semester or full one year is judged in a short time. They are never a foolproof test of one’s ability. They are the test of one’s memory and writing/typing speed.

Use of unfair means

Some students try to use unfair means to pass out the examinations. The innocent, hardworking and intelligent remain in the background.

Final words

But in spite of all this, we cannot say that there should be no examinations. There must be some proper way of judging the real worth of the students. So proper changes are required to avoid the abuses and increase the usefulness of the examinations. The assessment criteria of the examinations must be improved in such a way that all the students can show their abilities and can pass them without any fear.

More on essays

• Essay on Education
• Purpose of Education (Essay)
• Essay on my Best Teacher
• My Best Friend Essay
• Essay on My Hobby

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TIP Sheet HOW TO TAKE ESSAY TESTS

There are basically two types of exams:

Objective - requires answers of a word or short phrase, or the selection of an answer from several available choices that are provided on the test . Essay - requires answers to be written out at some length. The student functions as the source of information.

An essay exam requires you to see the significance and meaning of what you know. It tests your knowledge and understanding of the subject and your skill in reading and writing. To be successful on an essay exam, you must:

• Prove immediately that you know the material.
• Make your meaning unmistakably clear.
• Employ a reasonable organization and show sufficient thought development.
• Make every word count.
• Be specific.
• Use your own voice and style.

When you are writing an essay as part of an exam, all this must be done within what amounts to a first draft written in a very limited amount of time. As with all writing, if you think of your essay as being produced in three stages, you can tackle the test in an organized fashion. The three stages are pre-writing, writing, and revision. Suggestions for each of these stages follow.

The last section addresses preparation for essay exams. PRE-WRITING

Your first impulse in a writing exam is probably to read the question and start writing immediately, especially when you see those seconds ticking away on the clock. RESIST THAT IMPULSE! You can't successfully address the subject until you know precisely what you're required to do, you understand and have thought about the subject, and you are organized in how you approach the specific points you wish to make in your answer. 1.  Understanding what to do:

• When you get your copy of the exam, read through to make sure you understand what is expected of you. FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY!
• Underline or circle key words that direct the approach your answer should take. Some of the most common key words are:

Agree/Disagree : State your position and support it with facts Comment or Evaluate: State your position and support it with facts, discussing the issue and its merits. Analyze : Break down into all the parts or divisions looking at the relationships between them. Compare/Contrast : Show differences and similarities. Describe/Discuss : Examine in detail. Explain : Tell why something is as it is. Illustrate : Give examples and relate them to the statement in question. Prove/Defend : Demonstrate why something is true. Interpret : Explain the significance or meaning of something. List/State : Make a list of points or facts. Summarize : Hit the high points.

2.  Understanding the subject

• When you are confident that you understand the instructions, direct your attention to the topic.
• Collect your ideas.
• Formulate a thesis. Make sure it is a strong, concise statement that specifically addresses the question.
• Think of as many specific details and facts as you can that support the thesis.

3.  Getting organized

• Jot your ideas down on paper, in very brief format.
• Evaluate your ideas in light of the question. Ask yourself repeatedly: "Does this apply to the question I'm supposed to answer?" Select only those ideas most relevant to your purpose.
• Number your ideas in order of appropriate sequence (first step to last step, most important to least important, etc.)

1.  Remember your thesis. Now stick to it, referring back to it periodically throughout your essay. This gives your essay unity and coherence, and helps insure that you are not digressing. 2.  Write in an orderly fashion. If you suddenly think of a new point, jot it down in a margin or on scratch paper until you find an appropriate place for it. Don't just put it into the middle of what you were writing. 3. Avoid:

• Repeating, in other words, what you have already said.
• Digressing into material that does not answer the question.
• Language that is too broad or general. Be specific.
• Bluffing. This far too common practice of using elegant but empty language to conceal ignorance or lack of effort rarely works, and often irritates the reader(s).
• Write as legibly as you can. If you want, write on every other line so you have room to add later. When you want to cross something off, simply draw a straight line through it. This is much better than scribbling out an entire passage.
• If you run out of time, simply write "Ran out of time" at the close of the essay. This is much better than adding a hurriedly tacked on, and possibly incoherent, conclusion.

Essay examinations are difficult because of the time pressures, yet you should always try to leave a few minutes at the end to proofread your essay. 1.  Ask yourself, before you hand in the essay:

• Did I provide the information requested? That is, did I "explain" or "define" as the directions asked?
• Is the answer simply, clearly, and logically organized?
• Do I stick to my thesis statement? Is there unnecessary information in here?
• Did I proofread to check content and/or mechanical errors?

2.  Proofreading:

• Gives you a chance to catch and correct errors in content.
• Gives you a chance to correct your mechanical errors.
• Allows you to add material that may have occurred to you after writing the essay.

3.  You should proofread for:

• Complete sentences (watch for fragments, comma-splices, and run-ons).
• Words omitted, or one word used when you meant another.
• Logical transitions between sentences and paragraphs.
• Unnecessary repetition of words or ideas.
• Spelling errors.

3.  Essay type tests depend a great deal on your basic writing skills - organization, punctuation, grammar, and spelling. If your answer is not clearly written, your instructor won't be able to find it! Here are some basic guidelines to keep in mind as you take an essay test:

• Read the directions carefully! Read every part of the directions!
• Give yourself time to answer each question. Quickly look over the entire exam and budget your time per question accordingly.
• Above all, stay calm. You are being asked to show competence, not perfection.
• If you are not too sure about one question, leave it and go back.
• When given a choice, answer the questions you know best.
• State your points and support ideas clearly - don't make the instructor have to look for them.
• Go back to check and proofread all of your answers.

PREPARING FOR ESSAY EXAMS

WRITING A SUCCESSFUL ESSAY EXAM BEGINS ON DAY ONE 1.  Study regularly as you go along.

• Take careful lecture notes.
• Read all material when assigned.
• Become familiar with vocabulary.
• Keep a study list of all main ideas.

2.  Final preparation

• Review lecture notes and reading material.
• Find a classmate or friend willing to talk over key ideas and implications.
• Try to anticipate questions . This is very important!  Use your lecture notes to zero in on points that the instructor emphasized.
• Think through the material and write up the best possible essay questions you can.
• Then answer those questions.
• Pinpoint key points that you would like to make when answering each question.
• Put your answer into outline form or write it out completely.
• For each potential test question, use mnemonics or other memory techniques to move the information to your long-term memory for the exam.
• Create a list of the clue words for each point you wish to make.
• Create a mnemonic device to memorize those points.

3.  Come to the exam confident that you have something specific to say on all possible topics. KEY WORDS COMMONLY FOUND ON ESSAY EXAMS

Compare: Look for qualities or characteristics that resemble each other. Emphasize similarities among them, but in some cases also mention differences.

Contrast: Stress the dissimilarities, differences, or unlikenesses of things, qualities, events, or problems.

Criticize: Express your judgement about the merit or truth of the factors or views mentioned. Give the results of your analysis of these factors, discussing their limitations and good points.

Define: Give concise, clear, and authoritative meanings. Don't give details, but make sure to give the limits of the definitions. Show how the thing you are defining differs from things in other classes.

Describe: Recount, characterize, sketch, or relate in sequence or story form.

Diagram: Give a drawing, chart, plan, or graphic answer. Usually you should label a diagram. In some cases, add a brief explanation or description.

Discuss: Examine, analyze carefully, and give reasons pro and con. Be complete, and give details.

Enumerate: Write in list or outline form, giving points concisely one by one.

Evaluate: Carefully appraise the problem, citing both advantages and limitations. Emphasize the appraisal of authorities and, to lesser degree, your personal evaluation.

Explain: Clarify, interpret, and spell out the material you present. Give reasons for differences of opinion or of results, and try to analyze causes.

Illustrate: Use a figure, picture, diagram, or concrete example to explain or clarify a problem.

Interpret: Translate, give examples of, solve, or comment on, a subject, usually giving your judgment about it.

Justify: Prove or give reasons for decisions or conclusions, taking pains to be convincing.

List: As in "enumerate," write an itemized series of concise statements.

Outline: Organize a description under main points and subordinate points, omitting minor details and stressing the arrangement or classification of things.

Prove: Establish that something is true by citing factual evidence or giving clear logical reasons.

Relate: Show how things are related to, or connected with, each other or how one causes another, or is like another.

Review: Examine a subject critically, analyzing and commenting on the important statements to be made about it.

Sketch: means "break down into its component parts."

State: Present the main points in brief, clear sequence, usually omitting details, illustrations, or examples.

Summarize: Give the main points or facts in condensed form, like the summary of a chapter, omitting details and illustrations.

Trace: In narrative form describe progress, development, or historical events from some point of origin.

Identify or characterize: means "distinguish this term, or this person from all others that are similar." Both are clear injunctions to be as specific as possible.

Illustrate or exemplify: means "giving examples," showing thereby, rather than by definition, that you understand the concept. TRANSITIONAL WORDS AND PHRASES

To achieve unity and coherence, writers use transitional words and phrases. Transitional expressions clarify the relationships between clauses, sentences, and paragraphs, helping guide the readers along. The following is a partial list of transitional expressions.

To Add or Show Sequence: again, also, and, and then, besides, equally important, finally, first, further, furthermore, in addition, in the first place, last, moreover, next, second, still, too

To Compare: also, in the same way, likewise, similarly

To Contrast: although, and yet, but, but at the same time, despite, even so, even though, for all that, however, in contrast, in spite of, nevertheless, notwithstanding, on the contrary, on the other hand, regardless, sill, though, whereas, yet

To Give Examples or Intensify: after all, an illustration of, even, for example, for instance, indeed, in fact, it is true, of course, specifically, that is, to illustrate, truly

To Indicate Place: above, adjacent to, below, elsewhere, farther on, here, near, nearby, on the other side, opposite to, there, to the east, to the left

To Indicate Time: after a while, afterward, as long as, as soon as, at last, at length, at that time, before, earlier, formerly, immediately, in the meantime, in the past, lately, later, meanwhile, now, presently, shortly, simultaneously, since, so far, soon, subsequently, then, thereafter, until, until now, when

To Repeat Summarize or Conclude: all in all, altogether, as has been said, in brief, in conclusion in other words, in particular, in short, in simpler terms, in summary, on the whole,that is, therefore, to put it differently, to summarize

To Show Cause or Effect: accordingly, as a result, because, consequently, for this purpose, hence, otherwise, since, then, therefore, thereupon, this, to this end, with this object.

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ESL Discussion

Examination Is A True Test Of One's Ability.

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Life is very different in many ways compared to a test conducted in an examination hall .  An examination can't really test one's ture ability and potential as there's no garuntee that a candidate doing exceptional in an examination would be able to deal with the conflicts and hurdles which show themselves in a work place , be it in any profession or even in normal daily life . 

Yes they are as a matter of fact, but sometimes circumstances become untoward for a certain individual, he/she has all the capability to get through the exam, but can't and.  So as a rule this person will be called failure, but in real would he/she?

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