Essay Questions: Definition & Introduction

Introduction to Essay Questions

• Essay tests are a popular and widely used assessment technique in education and professional examinations.
• Unlike objective tests, essay questions require learners to create their own responses.
• Essay questions can reveal a learner's ability to reason, create, analyze, and synthesize information.
• Skills like reasoning, creation, analysis, and synthesis are generally better assessed by essay questions rather than objective tests.

Defining Essay Questions

• According to Stalnaker (1951), an essay question is a test item requiring an examinee to compose a response, typically in the form of one or more sentences.
• No single response or pattern can be listed as correct.
• Accuracy and quality are judged subjectively only by someone skilled or informed in the subject.
• Reiner, Bothell, Sudweeks, and Wood (2002) define four criteria for an essay question:
• Learners must compose, not select, a response.
• Responses consist of one or more sentences.
• There is no single correct answer.
• Accuracy and quality are subjectively judged by a subject matter specialist.
• Essay questions should encourage deep thinking and be graded by someone with expertise in the content area.

Types of Essays

• Two main types of essays in educational settings: coursework essays and examination essays.

Coursework Essays

• Coursework essays assess a learner's ability to research a topic thoroughly and handle a large amount of material.

Coursework essays consist of:

• Essay Outlines: Short summaries/outlines of a topic (around 500 words) that assess organization skills and selection of relevant information.
• Standard Essays: Full papers (1,000-2,500 words). Assesses the ability to describe, analyze relationships, provide coherent accounts, weigh evidence, diagnose issues, suggest solutions, express critical judgements and make comparisons.
• Extended Essays: Full papers (2,500-5,000 words). Assesses the capacity to solve less familiar problems and critically evaluate materials, requiring more extensive research.

Examination Essays

• Examination essays are short essays written during a formal examination.
• Learners might answer three essay questions in a 2-3 hour exam within 35-45 minutes each.
• The purpose of controlling question choice is to ensure learners are assessed over a similar range of topics.

Utility of Essay Questions

• Essay questions assess complex learning outcomes like synthesizing, organizing, expressing, and evaluating ideas.
• Essay questions allow learners to demonstrate their reasoning and explain how they arrived at conclusions.
• Teachers can use insights from essay responses to detect reasoning problems and help learners overcome them.
• Essay questions provide more authentic experiences since "constructing responses" are closer to real life, unlike selecting answers in objective tests.
• Problem-solving and decision-making are vital skills fostered by essay questions.

Essay vs Objective Questions

• Essay questions should strive for higher-order thinking skills.
• When deciding between essay and objective questions, refer back to the assessment objective.
• Essay questions are suitable for:
• Assessing understanding of subject-matter content.
• Evaluating thinking skills that require reasoning.
• Use essay questions to assess learners' ability to construct rather than select answers.
• Analyze the verbs describing the desired ability to be assessed to determine the type of test to use.
• Verbs that require learners to construct an answer (e.g., explain) are suitable for essay questions.
• Verbs focused on recall (e.g., list) are better for objective tests.

Limitations of Essay Questions

• Essay questions have limitations despite their popularity.
• Essay questions reduce content validity because only a limited number of questions can be included in a test.
• Essay questions have reliability issues because marking or grading can be questionable due to the subjective nature of the marking.
• Essay questions are more time-consuming than objective tests for teachers to mark learner responses.
• The limited response time affects writing quality and learners' ability to organize, write, and review their answers effectively.

Common Misconceptions About Essay Questions

• Essay questions do not automatically assess higher-order thinking, depends on question design.
• "Easy to construct" does not mean that good essay questions are easy to construct.
• Effective distractors are not needed in essay questions.
• Guessing is not eliminated because “bluffing" is introduced as a strategy.
• Knowledgeable learners with marginal writing skills are compromised because essay questions emphasize written communication skills.

Constructing Essay Questions

• Ensure learners clearly understand what is expected of them in responding to an essay question.
• Clearly define the intended learning outcome.
• Specify the performance learners should demonstrate.
• Focus on observable behaviors and actions.
• Avoid using essay questions when intended learning outcomes can be better assessed with other types of assessment.
• Essay questions have two variable elements: the degree to which the task is structured and the degree to which the scope of the content is focused.
• More structure and focus reduce problems with irrelevant ideas and extreme subjectivity.
• Clearly define the task and delimiting scope in an effort to create a question aligned with the intended learning outcome.
• The essay question must elicit responses providing valid and reliable evidence of learners' achievement of the intended learning outcome.

Improving Clarity of Essay Questions

• "Evaluate the impact of the Industrial Revolution on England" is a weak question because the scope and task is not clear.
• "Evaluate the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the quality of family life in England" is an improved question because it delimits the task, specify the focus is on family.
• Provide a criterion for evaluating the impact.
• Provide questions that are clear as to what must be done to evaluate.

Questions that are Fair

• Ensure learners have adequate material to answer the question.
• Teachers should ask themselves if learners should be reasonably expected to adequately perform the thought processes which are required of them in the task.
• Avoid indeterminate questions that are unstructured and allow learners to redefine the problem.
• Avoid ambiguous vocabulary such as "discuss.”
• Avoid including vocabulary that is too advanced.

Time Limits and Marks

• Specify the approximate time limit to aid learners in allocating time and to ensure allowances are made for for different learning aptitudes.
• Specify marks allotted for each question to help learners decide how much to write.
• Shorter essay questions should be used to assess the depth of learning.
• Longer essay questions should be used to assess the breadth of learning.
• Short essays are generally easier to mark than long ones.

Other Considerations

• Use several short essay questions rather than one long one.
• It is often debated whether or not learners should be permitted to choose one essay question from two or more optional questions.
• Present learners with new situation for higher-order thinking questions.
• Introduce introductory text, visuals, scenarios, resource material or problems to allow to learners have real-life skills.

Steps to Improve Essay Questions

• Preview the question before handing it to learner.
• Predict learner responses like to try responding to the question as a learner.
• Consider whether the learning objectives are met.
• Ammend where there are weak spots.
• Write a model answer with only major points and and outline.
• Ensure the question aligns with material.
• Ask colleagues with knowledge on the essay, model answer and learning results.
• Check for matching answers.
• Review learner responses after after they attempt the question.

Marking: Anlaytical Method

• Analytical marking consists of the marking scheme and the marks allocated.
• Consists of a list of major elements the teacher believes learners should include in the ideal answer.
• Marks are allocated for each factor with relevant examples.
• Marks are allotted for the "introduction” and “conclusion"
• Credit is given based on the elements included in the answer.

Marking: Holistic Method

• Holistic approach involves reading an entire response and assigning it to a category identified by a score or grade
• Sort answers into bins and a rating of the questions.
  • (exemplary, good and poor).
• Cannot be much more refined than five divisions, six at most.
• Need to reread everything to ensure that all the papers in the five piles are roughly the same.

Essay Marking Suggestions

• Marking should be blind, without names on.
• Read one question only before marking the next.
• Answers should be answered without interruption.
• Shuffle the papers before marking the next question.
• Grades should not be changed because of extraneous factors.
• Inform learners of what you consider "extraneous factors".
• Be aware not to consider writing for the answer.
• Avoid inaccuracy.
• Comments on learner's test scripts make essay test a good learning experience.
• Be aware of the test as it can affect if it get a low or high score at the end.
• When learners are told to stand on controversial issues, the marker must ensure that it is not changed.