An Apologia for the Timed Impromptu Essay Test

Abstract

wenty years ago, the timed impromptu essay test was everywhere defended by English faculty as the most effective, responsible, and teacher-supportive assessment device available. Today, it is under attack from all sides as formulaic, unresponsive to the nature of writing, and destructive to the curriculum. For example, even as moderate and scholarly team as the one from Miami University says about classes learning the writing processes, a single-sitting, impromptu essay exam neither tests the skills these students have been taught nor supports the connections between learning and writing process approach assumes (Black et al 9): Peter Elbow says essay tests give us about faint, smudged, and distorted picture of the student's writing (Belanoff and Dickson xiii). A recent NCTE Sense of the House Motion (No. 3, Nov. 1992) resolved that the Council oppose the practice of claiming to measure student's overall ability at writing by means of single score on single piece of writing produced at one sitting, and be it further resolved the Council work to eliminate this practice. Even holistic scoring sessions, praised in the past as examples of collegial communities of teachers agreeing on standards, are now under regular attack at conferences by scholars as diverse as Peter Elbow and Richard Larson for supposedly forcing agreement to inappropriate standards by tyrannical methods.