AC Writing task 19-11-2020

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write at least 250 words.

During last twenty years, the assessment of students has undergone a major transformation. Many educational institutions have shifted their focus from traditional examination towards a variety of innovative assessment techniques, as they believe traditional examination results are not often true to student’s ability.

To what extent do you agree with this belief?

Model answer

Task-1

The pie charts correlate global coffee consumptions, coffee production in four countries as well as profit distributions among business segments related to coffee. It is obvious that Europeans and Americans are the primary coffee consumers while South Africa is the largest coffee producer among the given countries. Moreover, companies that deliver coffee make more profit than other organisations that do business in this industry.

According to the illustration, Europeans drink more than 40% coffee which is the highest ratio of coffee intake in the world. America consumes 2% less than that while Japanese dissipate only 8% of global coffee. Rest of the world merely consumes 12% coffee.

South Africa contributes to 44% coffee production which is the highest. Indonesia harvests 22% coffee, exactly half of the South African coffee assembly. Japan and Vietnam make 18% and 16% coffee respectively. Interestingly, despite Japan’s being one of the top countries to produce coffee, its consumption ratio is comparatively lower.   

Finally, more than half of the profit from coffee is made by the delivery industries. Coffee retailers’ share of profit is roughly a quarter while coffee producers and exporters make 10% and 15% profits respectively.

Task-2

Model Answer 1: [Agree]
The traditional way of assessing students through paper-based exams has changed over the last two decades and many institutions are now focusing more on introducing innovative assessment techniques. The transformation is essential for proper evaluation and will help students become successful in the future. I believe the old system of evaluating pupils is flawed and often misguided.

To begin with, formal examination, in many cases, does not reflect the true knowledge and ability of a student. For instance, any student can pass a conventional exam with a good score by memorizing some questions, facts and formulas without really understanding them or knowing the exact use of them in practical life. It not only hampers their learning but also makes them incompetent in their jobs when they need to apply those formulas to solve bigger problems. Moreover, paper-based exams allow students to cheat and pass it without even studying hard.

On the contrary, unconventional forms of evaluation such as presentation, sudden quiz, group assignment, open-book exam etc. appraise student’s ability in a more accurate way. When a student gives a presentation in front of other students and teachers, it not only represents their creativity and presentation skills but also helps them become confident. The sudden tests keep the student updated with the class lecture. Also, the open book exam is a good technique to judge a student’s understanding of the basic. From my experience, I can say that I had to study more and needed to understand the concept clearly for attending the open book exam because I had no clue from where the teacher was going to make a question. These approaches scrutinize a learner’s creativity, knowledge depth, reasoning ability to use them in the real world.

To conclude, the educational institutions should not adhere to the old dogma and invite innovation, be it in teaching methods or assessing students.

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Model Answer 2: [Disagree]
Technology has revolutionalised the way we lead our life, communicate with others, do our shopping, work in an office or learn from schools. However, this has not replaced the need for traditional classroom-based education and traditional assessment techniques. I reckon conventional examination results are still used widely and should be in place as it is the best way of evaluating students’ performance.

To commence with, the use of technology in education has made learning, teaching and assessment process more convenient and accurate. But it has no way become the pillar of our education system as machines can never replace the intellectual and decision-making ability of our teachers. For example, a machine can detect grammatical errors of an examinee’s writing but can never judge the artistic and creative sense of it. Furthermore, new approaches to student assessment are still in the experimental phase and thus we can never truly evaluate a student by some computer-generated quizzes. We need human academics to talk to them and understand their concepts rather than letting computers decide who to pass and who to fail.

Moreover, innovative assessment techniques like open book exams, sudden quizzes, outfield projects, creative extension projects and so on could be often idiosyncratic as students can copy others and achieve good grades. Probably due to this, universities and many language test authorities still adhere to the traditional assessment approach in which students have to express their understanding in a paper-based exam. If traditional exam approach had not been effective, we would have been already away from it.

In conclusion, the conventional examination result is still the best way to judge students’ ability and depth of knowledge and it is hoped that we will stick to this method in the coming days.