How to Write Better Essays

to believe should be our paramount concern. The teacher dictates while

we silently note. The best student, then, is one who is quiet, who

patiently and uncritically records word-for-word all that the teacher

says. He or she is not there to question, to discuss or to challenge, but

to absorb the teacher ’s statements, to imitate authority and to repro-

duce it accurately without alteration. They know success in the exam-

ination depends upon how effectively they can trade the facts for

marks. And that’s all there is to it.

But if that were the case the last thing we would be setting as a form

of assessment would be essays, because they are notoriously unre-

liable. They assess a wide range of abilities – to analyse, to criticise, to

discuss, to synthesise ideas, to construct consistent arguments, to use

evidence, to evaluate, as well as to remember the facts. However, the

more abilities you try to assess, the less reliable that form of assess-

ment is for any one ability alone. And, despite all our attempts to reduce

the subjective element in marking, most markers would acknowledge

that it’s impossible to remove it entirely from essay marking.

Other forms of assessment that target just one ability, however, have

a much better record. For example, the most reliable form of assess-

ment, the multiple choice question paper, boasts 100 per cent reliabil-

ity. Using this we are guaranteed that each student’s paper will be

assessed with absolute objectivity and all will be judged on exactly the

same criteria. Indeed, for marking purposes the human element can be

removed entirely with computerised answer sheets.

It follows, then, that if we were really assessing our ability to recall

the facts, as so many of us have come to believe, the essay would be

the very last form of assessment we would use. Far better to use the

reliable, though restricted, multiple choice question paper. Here we

know we have absolute objectivity, albeit at the cost of assessing only

a restricted range of abilities.

Challenging authority

However, as most of us come to realise, we’re not just assessing our

ability to recall what we’ve heard in class or read in our books. After

years of compulsory education in which we believe that our main task

as students is to learn the facts and reproduce uncritically what the

authorities say in each subject, we reach university and we’re suddenly

expected to challenge the opinions we hear, to analyse, discuss, and

have opinions of our own.

62 Interpretation of the Question

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