Teaching Prepared by Caroline W. Ndirangu

2.2  KINDS OF TESTS
 Read through the articles below and identify the different types of tests. You will 
refer to these reading as you formulate your own questions.
Reading # 19       Test  (Student Assessment)
ESSAY TESTS
Characteristics
 
•  Essay tests require a student to organize and express herself in her own 
words.
•  Essay tests consist of few questions which require lengthy answers.
•  The quality of an essay test depends on the skill of the person setting 
and   
              marking the examination.
•  Essay test are relatively easy to prepare and hard to mark very accurately.
•  Essay test permit bluffing. If the person marking the essay test answers 
has a skill in reading essays, and the grade awarded will be equivalent to 
the student’s performance.
Limitations
•  Poor content sampling: essay questions usually do not all cover the 
same content, in other words, students answer questions on different 
contents. To avoid theproblem of  poor content sampling, it is better for 
the teacher to set several questions requiring short answers and covering 
a wider area.
•  Low reader reliability: some students do better on some questions and 
poorly on others. This risk could be minimized by careful construction 
of the questions and also setting up specific scoring procedures.
•  The student does not always understand what the question is asking and 
therefore is not sure how to respond. This problem could be minimized 
by the examinerwriting the question so that the student’s task is defined 
as completely and specifically as possible.
Guidelines
•  Try as far as possible to restrict the subject matter to be covered by the 
question.
•  Define the learner’s task as completely and as clearly as possible.
•  Try to provide generous time limits for the test.

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African Virtual University
   
•  Always check the adequacy of the question by seeing if you and any 
other ‘experts’ can agree on an ideal answer.
Write 3 essays from your teaching subjects, one each from the cognitive, affective 
and psychomotor domains.