GT 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

Dear Sir,
My name is Jot and I am working as a part-time work as a cashier from the last one year. I am writing a letter in response to the advertisement you gave for the full-time worker required for the cashier position.
I came here as an international student and I was doing my major in Accounting. As per the privileges, given to the international student I was supposed to work only for 20 hours, and hence, to sponsor my study and my living expenses, I joined your company as a part-time worker.
Now, I have been graduated and therefore, I decided to continue my job full time but for that purpose, I need your support.
As far as my goals are concerned, I want to become an accountant in Financial Institution but before that I want to have experience.
I will definitely be an asset to the company as I am working here for the last one year. I need no training and no special instruction to work in this environment. Moreover, I know the requirements of the customers which specifically important to increase the sale.
I would like to apply for the position and I look forward to your response.
Yours Faithfully,
Jot

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.