From the perspective of writing-across-the-curriculum researcher John C. Bean in his book Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, essay exams are "preferable to objective tests when examining students' ability to think critically about course material" (187). But essay exams do have some limitations that faculty can try to overcome in assigning and grading them. One problem with essay exams is that "writing as testing" could drive out "writing as learning" (185). An in-class essay takes only fifty minutes of active thinking and writing and a final exam only two or three hours, whereas a journal, sequenced short assignments, microthemes, or multidrafts of longer papers would take many hours of thinking and writing.

Essay exams also avoid the powerful thinking and learning to write that goes on when students revise a draft. Essay exams, says Bean, are "almost always unedited, unrevised first drafts" written for only one reader--the teacher (186). Another problem is that teachers are not consistent in what they look for in essay exams and their impressions of students influence their grading.

Bean suggests four ways to make essay exams more effective.
1. Build process into the exam
*Give several potential exam questions a week or so ahead of the exam. Students can prepare answers to all questions ahead of time.

*Use an exam preparation notebook with a list of fifteen or so possible final exam questions. Students enter ideas all semester from readings, lectures, and discussions relevant to each of the questions, exploring the questions in writing.

*Allow or require crib sheets for each question on 3x5 cards. Some students put thesis and outline, others support. They turn in all crib sheets with the exams.

*Assign take-home exams. Be sure to let students know how much you expect. Are multiple drafts expected? Will the essay be graded like a formal essay? Is the exam open-book and open-notes or closed-book? May the student get help from the Writing Center? How much time does the teacher intend students to spend? How long should the exam be?

2. Teach students how to write essay exams
The English composition classes do teach students how to write structured essays, but be sure to let your students know what carries over into your discipline.
*Arrange an in-class norming session:
Use four to six examples from a previous essay exam and let students rank them from best to worse and try to predict the teacher's grade.

*Give practice exams, such as a twenty-minute essay in or out of class, and then show, read, or leave the model ones in the Writing Center.

*Teach students to begin an exam with a thesis statement, a one-sentence summary answer to the overall question. Have students practice writing thesis statements in collaborative groups.

*Show examples of A exams after each test: read some to the class or leave them in the Writing Center.

*At times let a student rewrite a weak exam.

3. Improve the exam questions
*Limit choice. Students waste time getting started and confuse answers when they have choices. In addition, it is almost impossible to write questions of equal difficulty.

*Keep each question short and avoid subquestions or hints. Students may try to follow each hint or subquestion.

*Ask for thesis-based writing and avoid tasks phrased as imperatives. "Students seem to do best when the task is stated either as a thesis that must be supported, modified, or refuted or as a single question the answer to which will be the writer's thesis statement," says Bean (192). Students do not do as well with assignments stated as imperatives: discuss, analyze, evaluate, and compare and contrast. (192).

4. Develop consistent grading criteria and grading methods to increase reliability
*Use a scoring guide to let students know your criteria for grading an essay. Since in-class essays are first draft writing, Bean recommends that faculty read "demandingly" for thesis, organization, and use of evidence and "forgivingly" for sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling on in-class exams. Formal out-of-class essays are a different story, however. "Poor spelling needs to be severely penalized" in those essays, writes Bean, so that writers "understand the negative message their prose sends to readers" (193).

To minimize the influence of the teacher's impression of a student on the grading of writing, Bean, based on his own experience as a professor, has several suggestions (194-5):

*Do not look at students' names when you read the exams. Have them write their names on the back or give a four digit code they choose on the spot and will identify after you grade all the exams.

*If you have several short essay answers to grade, grade one question at a time, rather than all at once and shuffle the exams after each question. Record scores so that you do not know what a student received on question 1 when you grade question 2.

*Read a random sample of exams rapidly before you make any decision about grades. Choose "anchor papers" to represent A, B, and C grades (Bean,195). With a difficult essay, compare it to the anchor.

Works Cited

Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking,
     and Active Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.

For more information about essay exams and other aspects of writing, such as responding to and grading writing, borrow Engaging Ideas orThe Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing Across the Curriculum by Christopher Thaiss or Helping Students Write Well: A Guide for Teachers in All Disciplines by Barbara Walvoord from the Writing Center.