TASK I: CONSTRUCT AN ESSAY QUESTION

As we all know, Stalnaker (1951) stated that an essay question is a test item by
examine in form of one or more sentences or a question on a test or examination on a given
topic requiring a written analysis or explanation, usually of a specified length. So, for this
task I construct a question which is based on topic from and for English SPM syllabus. The
title of the topic is travel around the world. The learning outcomes of this topic is to assess
learners’ understanding regarding travel around the world as well as their geography skills
in the world. Other than that, it is to assess the learners thinking skills, writing skills and
their knowledge on the Asian continent countries which includes the countries, city and
their style of explanation on the reason to live another part of Asian continent. Before
expecting students to perform well on essay question, we must make sure that they have the
required skills to excel. So, the final learning outcome of this topic are to assess the
students’ ability to organize that material in an effective manner, to show how ideas relate
and interact in a specific context and finally, the ability to write effectively in both
sentences and paragraphs.

The title of the essay question that I constructed is, “If you had the opportunity to
move to another part of Asian continent, where would you choose to live? Explain your
choice.” This essay is a continuous descriptive essay which students have to write about
350 words or more and they must give their own ideas and main points to write an essay
based on the question given. This essay is an examination essay. This essay is based on the
format of English 1119 SPM Paper 1 Section B which it is a continuous writing part that
the students must answered on one hour. It is also known as extended response essay which
allow students to construct types of strategies, processes, interpretations and explanations
for a question.

To justify the criteria. Elaborating on this definition, Reiner, Bothell, Sudweeks and
Wood (2002), argued that to qualify as an essay question it should meet the following four
criteria. The first criteria are the learner has to compose rather than select his response or
answer. In essay questions, learners have to construct their own answer and decide on what
material to include in their response. Second, the learner provided the answer which it
consists of one or more sentences. The learners have to respond in the form of sentences. In
theory there is no limit to the length of the answer. However, in most cases its length is
predetermined by the difficulties of the question and the time limit allotted for the question.
Next, no one single correct response or answer. In other words, the question should be
composed so that it does not ask for one single correct response. You could modify the
question. Now, it is an essay question that assesses learners’ ability to think and give
reasons for the killing supported with relevant evidence. Lastly, the accuracy and quality of
learners’ responses or answers to essays must be judged subjectively by a specialist in the
subject matter. The nature of essay questions is such that only specialists in the subject
matter can judge to what degree responses answers to an essay is complete, accurate and
relevant. Good essay questions encourage learners to think deeply about their answers
which can only be judged by someone with the appropriate experience and expertise in the
content area. Therefore, content proficiency is vital for both writing and grading essay
questions.

Another criteria used in constructing the essay question is that the essay can allow a
teacher to examine students’ ways of reasoning, critical thinking, creative thinking or skills
to synthesize material or compose an argument (Bean, 1996). Nevertheless, Minbashian
(2004) stated that essay items indeed offer instructors and opportunity to engage students in
high-level thinking through careful design and evaluation. In other words, essay question
can be used to measure students’ higher order thinking skills after answering the essay
question. Furthermore, McMillan (2001) stated that the essay question can tap complex
thinking by making students to organize and combine and interpret information, make
arguments, give explanations, evaluate the quality of ideas and carry out other types of
reasoning.

However, construct an essay question has its own advantages, limitations and
misconceptions. In order to use essay questions effectively, it is important to the educators
to understand the following advantages, limitations and common misconceptions of essay
questions. Without understanding them, educators may use an essay question when another
item type would be more appropriate, or educators may grossly underestimate what would
be required to effectively use essay questions.

ADVANTAGES

1. Assess higher-order or critical thinking skills.

Essay questions provide an effective way of assessing complex learning outcomes

that cannot be effectively assessed by other commonly used paper-and-pencil assessment
procedures. In fact, some of the most complicated thinking processes can only be assessed
through essay questions, when a paper-and-pencil test is necessary (e.g., assessing students’
ability to make judgments that are well thought through and that are justifiable).
 2. Evaluate student thinking and reasoning.

Essay questions require students to demonstrate their reasoning and thinking skills,
which gives teachers the opportunity to detect problems students may have with their
reasoning processes. When educators detect problems in students’ thinking, they can help
them overcome those problems.

3. Provide authentic experience.

Constructed responses are closer to real life than selected responses. Problem
solving and decision-making are vital life competencies. In most cases these skills require
the ability to construct a solution or decision rather than select a solution or decision from a
limited set of possibilities.

LIMITATIONS

1. Assess a limited sample of the range of content.

Due to the time it takes for students to respond to essay questions and for graders to
score responses, the number of essay questions that can be included in a test is limited.
Thus, essay questions necessitate testing a limited sample of the subject matter, thereby
reducing content validity. A test of 80 multiple-choice questions will most likely cover a
wider range of content than a test of 3-4 essay questions.

2. Are difficult and time consuming to grade.

Answers to essay questions are likely to be graded less reliably than other types of
test questions and take considerable time to grade. One of the advantages of essay
questions is that they allow students some latitude in formulating their responses. However,
this advantage comes at the cost of time spent scoring and reliability in scoring. Different
readers may vary in their grading of the same or similar responses (interscorer reliability)
and one reader can vary significantly in his grading consistency depending on many factors
such as intracore reliability. Therefore, essay answers of similar quality may receive
notably different scores. Gender and ethnic bias, the length and legibility of the response,
and the personal preferences of the grader with regards to the content and structure of the
response are some of the factors that can lead to unreliable grading.

3. Provide practice in poor or unpolished writing.

 The way in which students construct their responses to essay questions differs in
several ways from real-world writing tasks. Ebel and Frisbie (1986) point out that "the
practice that essay tests given in writing may be practice in bad writing—hasty, ill
considered, and unpolished"

MISCONCEPTION

1. Assess higher-order or critical thinking skills regardless of how the

responses are written.

An essay question does not automatically assess higher-order thinking skills. Essay
questions often simply assess recall. Also, if a teacher designs an essay question meant to
assess higher-order thinking but then scores students’ responses in a way that only rewards
recall ability, that teacher is not assessing higher-order thinking.

2. Essay questions are easy to construct.

Essay questions are easier to construct than multiple-choice items because there is
no need to create effective distracters. However, that doesn’t mean that good essay
questions are easy to construct. They may be easier to construct in a relative sense, but
constructing them still requires a lot of effort and time. Essay questions that are hastily
constructed without much thought and review usually function poorly.

3. The use of essay questions eliminates the problem of guessing.

The use of essay questions introduces bluffing, another form of guessing. Some
students are adept at using various methods of bluffing such as vague generalities, padding,
or namedropping to add credibility to an otherwise vacuous answer. Thus, the use of essay
questions changes the nature of the guessing that occurs, but does not eliminate it.

4. Essay questions benefit all students by placing emphasis on the importance

of

written communication skills.

Written communication is a life competency that is required for effective

performance in many vocations. Essay questions challenge students to organize and express
ideas and solutions in their own words, thereby giving them a chance to practice written
communication skills that will be helpful to them in future vocational responsibilities. At
the same time, the focus on written communication skills is a serious disadvantage for
students who have marginal writing skills but know the subject-matter being assessed. To
the degree that students who are knowledgeable in the subject obtain low scores because of
their inability to write well, the validity of the test scores will be diminished.

5. Essay questions encourage students to prepare more thoroughly.

Some research seems to indicate that students are more thorough in their
preparation for essay questions than in their preparation for objective examinations
containing multiple-choice or matching questions. However, after an extensive review of
existing literature and research on this topic, Crook concluded that "student expectations of
the cognitive level and content of tasks probably exert much more influence on their study
behavior and achievement than do their expectations of the task format (for given content
and cognitive level)" (1988). Thus, Crook concludes that students prepare more based on
the expectations teachers set upon them (more complicated thinking, critical thinking and
breadth and depth of content) than they do by the type of test question they expect to be
given.

In the end, the misconceptions, limitations and advantages of construct an essay

question can quite be challenging. But, in order to test the students’ skills to understand the
questions, use creative and critical thinking as well as writing skills to answer an essay
question that the educators have to use an essay question.

Name of course Course: English Form 5 (SPM Essays) – 3 students

and topic Topic: Travel around the world
Learning  To assess learners’ understanding regarding travel around the
outcomes to be world as well as their geography skills in the world.
assessed  To assess the learners thinking skills, writing skills and their
knowledge on the Asian continent countries which includes the
countries, city and their style of explanation on the reason to
live another part of Asian continent.
The essay If you had the opportunity to move to another part of Asian continent,
question where would you choose to live?
Explain your choice.
Justification for  To assess the learners thinking skills, writing skills and their
the use of essay knowledge on the Asian continent countries which includes the
question countries, city and their style of explanation on the reason to
live another part of Asian continent.
 Criteria used in  Requires examinees to compose rather than select their
constructing the response.
essay question  Elicits student responses that must consist of more than one
sentence.
 Allows different or original responses or pattern of responses.
 Requires subjective judgment by a competent specialist to
judge the accuracy and quality of responses
 To examine students’ ways of reasoning, critical thinking,
creative thinking or skills to synthesize material or compose an
argument.
 The essay question can tap complex thinking by making
students to organize and combine and interpret information,
make arguments, give explanations, evaluate the quality of
ideas and carry out other types of reasoning.
References  Bean (1996)
 Minbashian (2004)
 McMillan (2001)
 Reiner, Bothell, Sudweeks and Wood (2002)
 Stalnaker (1951)

TASK II: PREPARE A MARKING SCHEME

Marking on an essay question can be challenging by some educators. In order to

ease them, the marking scheme must be prepared for the use as a guidance for the educators
to marking the essay question with the reason to give overall fair marking to the students as
well as grading their performance on writing and their understanding to answer the
question. There are two marking scheme types. They are holistic rubric and analytic rubric.

Holistic Rubric

Holistic rubric scoring method focuses on checking whether the writers are really
answering the questions and fulfilling the requirements of the task rather than finding their
incompetency and deficiencies in writings as wells as inspect on other methods of writing.
Weagle (2002) explains that the holistic approach is based on a general impression of
writing. It considers the overall quality of the product and a single and integrated score or
grade will be awarded by the examiner. According to Wiseman (2012), time and cost
effective are the advantages on use holistic scoring rubrics and method in scoring essays as
well as it is the most economical, flexible, practical and applicable assessment. The time
required to train the examiners to use the holistic rubrics and to grade the essays using the
holistic rubrics is lesser and shorter compared to the analytic scoring. For these reasons, the
holistic scoring is the preferred method of scoring in large-scale testing contexts that
involve many test takers taking the test at the same time.

Analytic Rubric

Analytic rubric is a scoring method which it involves the use of separate scales in
assessing different aspects of writing, such as content, organization, vocabulary, grammar
and mechanics. Wiseman (2012) stated that analytic scoring calls for “the separation of the
various features of composition into components for scoring purposes”. This type of
scoring offers more detailed explanation on the writer’s performance than one single score
done in a holistic scoring. Analytic scoring method is preferred compared to the holistic
scoring method when comprehensive feedback is needed, especially with small-scale
assessment like the classroom assessment. Its detailed feedback assists the examiners (the
teachers) in discovering in which aspect their students are good and poor at in essay
writing. This would aid the teachers in doing follow-up activities such as consultation,
personal coaching and choosing appropriate exercise for the students in order to help their
students to improve their writing. In other words, analytic scoring helps the teachers to
discriminate the students’ weak and strong aspects of their writing performance from one
test to another.

Between the two scoring methods, I choose holistic scoring method as a marking
scheme for this essay question. There are plentiful of reasons. One of the reasons are it is
time saving and it is faster, reliable and valid when marking an essay question. It is
considered a time saving when an examiner such as us that by have this marking scheme,
we do not have to repeat to read the marking scheme (Ghalib & Al-Hatani, 2015). In
addition, this rubric is indeed a quick method to evaluate based on the reader’s general
impression. Furthermore, this method also gives overall judgement of students’
performance on writing skills which it is fair and practical because it covers all features of
assessment as well as that this rubric aligned with students’ need and ability to answer an
essay question (Randhawa, 1996). Finally, this scoring method is useful when more essays
to mark and get all done before the deadline.

The Marking Scheme

The marking scheme is a holistic approach and use by the examiner such as myself
to mark the essays written by students. This marking scheme is used for continuous writing
part of section B of English SPM Paper 1 format. This marking scheme has its marking
guidance on how the students’ essays will be assessed by the examiner itself for English
Paper 1 (Section B) continuous writing. Here are the guidelines for examiners: -

MARKING SCHEME FOR CONTINUOUS WRITING (SECTION B)

1. The candidate’s response will be assessed based on impression.

2. The examiner shall read and re-read the response carefully with fair and validity
and at the same time underline for gross or minor errors or put in insertion marks
(^) where such errors occur.

3. The examiner should also mark for good vocabulary or expressions by putting a
merit tick at the end of such merits.

4. The examiner shall fit the candidate’s response against the most appropriate band
having most of the criteria as found in the band. The examiner may have to refer
to upper or lower bands to the band already chosen to BEST FIT the student’s
response to the most appropriate band. The marks from the band decided on for
the script also depend on the number of criteria that are found in the script.
5. Justify the band and marks given, if necessary, by commenting on the strengths
and weaknesses of the candidate’s response, using the criteria found in the band.
CONTINUOUS WRITING MARKING SCHEME (50 MARKS)

MARK RANGE DESCRIPTION OF

CRITERIA

 Language – entirely accurate, with occasional first draft slips

 Sentence structures, varied and sophisticated – achieve
A particular effect
 Vocabulary – wide and precise – shades of meaning
44 – 50
 Punctuation and spelling – accurate and helpful
 Paragraphs – well-planned, unified and linked
 Topic – consistently relevant
 Interest – aroused and sustained throughout writing

 Language – accurate, with occasional minor errors or first draft

slips
B  Sentence – varied lengths and types, some complex sentences
 Vocabulary – wide and precise – shades of meaning
38 – 43
 Punctuation and spelling – nearly always accurate
 Paragraphs – evidence of planning, appropriately linked
 Writing – relevant, interest aroused and sustained throughout

 Language – largely accurate

 Sentences – some variety in length and type, tendency to use one
type
 Simple structures – error-free, errors with more ambitious
C structures,
 Vocabulary – wide enough to convey meaning but lack
32 – 37 precision
 Punctuation in simple sentences – accurate, with errors in
more complex use
 Spelling – simple words, correct but misspelt with more
sophisticated words
 Paragraphs – show unity, at times inappropriately linked
 Writing – relevant, lack originality and interest aroused and
sustained throughout
 Some interest – aroused but not sustained

 Language – sufficiently accurate

 Patches of clear, accurate language – especially, when simple
D structures and vocabulary used
26 – 31  Some variety in sentence type and length
 Vocabulary – adequate but not developed to show intended
precision
 Punctuation and spelling – generally correct
 Writing – relevant but lacks interest
  Meaning – never in doubt
 Single Word Errors (SWE) – frequent and serious to hamper
reading
E
 Sentence structures – accurate but not sustained for long
20 – 25  Vocabulary – limited, too simple or when more ambitious, it’s
imperfectly understood
 Spelling – simple words spelt correctly
 Paragraphs – lack unity or haphazardly arranged
 Some relevance – topic partially treated
 High incidence of linguistic errors

 Meaning – fairly clear

 SWE – very frequent and impedes reading/blurring
 Vocabulary – many serious errors of various kinds, mainly
U (i) single-word type, but could be corrected without rewriting
 Sentences – very few are accurate, often simple and repetitive
14 – 19  Punctuation and spelling – sometimes used correctly
 Paragraphs – lack unity or no paragraphs at all

 Some sense
U (ii)  Multiple Word Errors (MWE) – very frequent, requires re-
8 – 13 reading before being understood, impedes reading / blurring
 Only a few accurate sentences – mostly simple sentences
 Length – short

 Almost entirely impossible to read / blurring

U (iii)  Whole sections make little or no sense at all
 Occasional patches of clarity (marks awarded)
0–7  Vocabulary – simple words used
 “0” to scripts with no sense from beginning till the end
TASK III: REFLECTION