Teaching Essay Exams

Integrating Essay Exams and Teaching Response-Ability

Essay exams are not commonly found in many composition courses at present-- and they are often the subject of debate among composition faculty.  However, essay examinations are still one of the more typical and challenging writing situations our students will face in university, and the essay exam workshop is one of the more popular sessions at Wayne State’s Academic Success Center.   

When we hear the remark that someone “teaches to an exam,” we often hear concerns that someone may be confusing teaching with testing, perhaps either over-amplifying the importance of the exam, or being overly concerned with recreating exam conditions as a means to prepare students for their “big moment” during the course.  Despite concerns that “writing as testing” can drive out “writing as learning,” writing an essay exam can reflect much of the critical thinking and learning that goes into writing essays -- if essay exams are carefully worked into a class.  

Whether the exam is based on short-answer questions or a longer essay, this is a unique kind of writing under pressure.  Students will face pressure to write well on demand, without the usual resources, support, or time to thoroughly engage writing as a process.  As most of us know from our own experiences writing essay exams, these pressures can be anxiety provoking.  Many of us are also aware of how writing under pressure can generate new insights, unforeseen connections, and important clarifications.  If the essay exam is to be a valuable learning experience, teachers need to build process into the exam; students need to know what a good essay exam answer looks like; and students and teachers together need to develop an overall approach to writing essay exams that will help students respond confidently and with precision. 

Teaching a systematic approach to writing an essay exam usually consists of four ground rules worked into lessons leading up to an essay exam.  Much of this can be accomplished by building process into the exam itself:

1) Teaching students how to prepare for essay exams

2) Teaching students how to analyze the questions or format of the exam

3) Teaching students how to plan and structure answers

4) Teaching methods for drafting an essay exam

                1) Teaching how to prepare:  Most research suggests that if you use essay exams, you need to prepare students from the beginning of the course.  Students need to learn that going to class, participating, taking notes, responding to readings, and completing assignments are all important steps to prepare for writing the exam.  As you know, some students equate exams with last minute cramming and memorizing bodies of information.  Students will be responsible to recall a significant amount of information from a course in most of the essay exams they write.  However, in a writing class it’s important to emphasize that they learn how to relate to class information in meaningful ways.  Students often need help learning how to connect facts, details, examples and terms to meaningful themes and concepts from the course.  Teaching students how to frame central issues from a course into meaningful patterns centered on terminology, controversies, explanations, and conceptual frameworks may significantly change the way they prepare and study for an essay exam.  This may require some time uncovering some of the schematics of the course or subject matter, drawing attention to the organizing principles in chapter headings, key terms, summaries, lectures, and assignments. 

Of course, there are many ways a teacher can help develop good student habits in preparation for an essay exam, but encouraging a process that helps students learn how to prepare and gain knowledge of what is expected of them is essential. 

2) Teaching how to analyze: A critical moment in any essay exam rests in reading instructions and questions carefully.  Students can save themselves a lot of problems by paying close attention to the overall format of an exam and by reading each question carefully.

Surveying the format of an exam means starting off making good straightforward judgements about managing time and planning which answers to write first.  Taking on questions that you’re comfortable with first can really help build confidence and allot time for the more challenging responses. 

Analyzing individual questions is more or less a matter of recognizing different types of essay question and planning accordingly.  The most basic concern is identifying the general type of question—

Identification Items: These normally call for short definitions in one or two sentences

Short Answer Questions:  call for answers ranging from a couple sentences to several paragraphs and typically contain key terms or topics from a course, as well as rhetorical modes such as: “compare,” “describe,” “define,” “process,” “classify,” or “evaluate” as organizing principles for thesis support.  The Owl Purdue website has a good breakdown of such common questions: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_essay.html

Besides an understanding of how to work with organizing principles for short answer questions, students should also consider whether questions have more than one part, and to structure their answer accordingly.

Essay Questions: Longer essay questions can take anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours.  As is the case with writing Identification Items or Short Answer exams, the secret is in recognizing what the question calls on writers to do.  Essay questions typically call on the following writing tasks:

·         Summarize main ideas

·         Explain significance

·         Apply concepts

·         Synthesize a number of sources

·         Propose a course of action

·         Evaluate

·         Analyze causes

·         Compare and Contrast

·         Discuss a quotation

3) Teaching how to plan answers:  Of course, planning an answer depends largely on the type of question and the time and points allotted to it.  Students may want to parse questions, underlining key terms in the question and writing notes that help in organizing an answer.  For example: a typical question will often ask that a student first “defines” an event and then “explains” its significance to broader contexts.  Full length essays require more time planning and more detailed guidelines for dealing with organizational cues.  Beyond a careful reading of questions and its organizational prompts, students need to learn how to probe questions for possible ideas and directions. A good way to start is to question the question itself.  What kind of answer is the question calling for?  What is the central topic it deals with?  Does it ask to simply define, describe or summarize?  To what extent does it ask to analyze, interpret, evaluate or argue according to your own understanding? 

Such questions can lead to more detailed outlines and drafts. Outlining can be taught in terms of structuring main points and paragraphs, but also as a means to think through and arrange reasons, premises, details, examples, assumptions, claims, warrants, and grounds—depending on the level and focus of the writing course.  Outlines should also be reviewed to check if the essay seems like it will be well focused, well supported, and well organized.  Carefully revising and editing outlines during an essay exam is crucial—as students need take this time early in the exam to turn any creative brainstorming into something workable within an exam setting.  

                4) Teaching how to draft an answer:  It is important to take time to teach how to actually write an essay exam, as this process is much different than most what most students associate with “writing.”  Writing a good essay exam is tantamount to producing a good first draft. Clearly, there will be time to make some additions and to edit or make corrections, but no time for significant revision.  However, there are other important dimensions of the writing process of good essay exams. 

Typically, there is no need to spend time on developing an introduction that sets up the main point or thesis.  The central claim or answer to the question can be stated immediately in response to the question (which can be repeated as a generic opening sentence).  The initial paragraph should be written as clearly as possible, encapsulate the main line of thinking, and forecast the direction of what’s to come.   In most essay exams, a straightforward thesis that answers the question will take care of most of these requirements.

Subsequent paragraphs providing supporting evidence, reasons, details and examples should also be relatively concise and clearly related to the main point.  The point in an essay exam is not necessarily to demonstrate the depth of understanding of each supporting premise, but to encapsulate how it relates to your answer and to highlight understanding of how material in a course has worked together.  This means attempting to link specific ideas from your plans in relevant ways.

To make such connections, students can rely on transition words to help save time and maintain coherence.

Again, most commonly, the emphasis is on making connections between insights and evaluations to course material.

                Other strategies students can work with in the drafting process include: strategies for writing a simple summative conclusion, strategies for incorporating new ideas (such as adding new paragraphs or simply adding a sentence to existing paragraphs), strategies for proofreading, and strategies for time-management.

Students will need to see examples of A grade essay exams in order to understand what kinds of writing is expected.  Good examples can be annotated to emphasize how students work from their plan to connect key ideas, establish a main focus, explain key terms, illustrate with examples, maintain coherence, and draw conclusions.