There seems to be an increasing trend towards assessing students through exams rather than through continual assessment.What are the advantages and disadvantages of exams as a form of assessment?
Many educational insitutions (LR: institutions) tend to be shifting towards conducting annual examinations rather than having regular assessments to evaluate students’ performance. However, while an abundance of time to prepare and difficulties in cheating during exams are the main advantages, there are also disadvantages to this tend such as an overload of information and students’ anxiety. (TR: good intro)
To begin with the positives, a crucial advantage is that pupils have an excess of time to be ready prepare for an exam. Teachers often(TR: academic writing implies being not categoric about anything, to soften the meaning you’d better use this adverb, it’s called “hedging”) provide students with a list of questions in advance. For instance, my history professor posts exam issues topics at the beginning of each semester (TR: avoid personal instance in academic writing). As a result, Learners can prepare better and manage their time efficiently. In contrast, continual assessment has lack time may not provide enough time to repeat review all the material efficiently. Moreover, it is very hard to cheat during exams. as (GR: make a complex sentence out of 2 simple ones) independent experts monitor students every minute. For example, my university provides us with 3 or 4 examiners per one examination.(TR: again, no personal examples, please) So(CC: “therefore” is more formal and better suits this context), there is no way to cheat during the exam.
Despite these advantages, there are a few downsides connected to this trend. Firstly, the pressure
of exams might lead to anxiety or depression. Not every person can cope with the study load (LR: write the words separately). For instance, if pupils perform poorly, they do not have an opportunity to redeem themselves. MoreoverFurthermore, students have an overload of information right before the exams. Lots of Many (TR: many is more appropriate for essay writing) people have a short-term memory, (GR: in compound sentence a comma is essential before “and”) and they cannot memorize such a great amount of information.
To sum up, while assessing via exams has advantages such advantages as an abundance of time for preparation and difficulties in cheating, there are also disadvantages such as anxiety and overload of information, which might negatively affect the effectiveness of exams at all.