Formal examination are the only effective way to assess student’s performance. Continual assessment such as course work and projects is not a satisfactory way to do it. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Opinions vary on whether formal examination or continual assessment plays an important role to evaluate the performance of students. I can understand the reason why some people think that formal examination is the best one, however, I am of the opinion that continual assessment can carry out the assessment.

It is undeniable that formal assessment is a beneficial way to assess students in terms of knowledge synthesis ability and the saving money for many examinations. Regarding the former, the formal examination, for example, the final exam happens when every lecture are presented for students, they accumulate enough knowledge during semester and the test can be checked out all the knowledge they gain through the general test, as a result, there is only one exam during four months gives students more time to study and satisfy their acquisition of knowledge to sit an exam as the best of them. As far as I am concerned is that the schools can save a lot of money to invest in the cutting-edge facilities when they only hold an end-semester exam. It is essential to foster an effective teaching method thanks to modern types of equipment instead of examination which raise the test anxiety and not enhance the performance.

Despite the aforementioned arguments, continual assessment brings many benefits people should consider related to learning motivation and effective feedbacks. The major contribution is this method can boost the student’ motivation as they students can find some minor achievements, which can help them increase the motivation for engagement in the curriculum throughout the course and avoid the last – minute cramping before the final exam. With regard to the latter, given that the examination performance, the students can be given back the feedbacks influencing the student’s perception of study purpose. This helps them not only find out their effective learning-method and increase effort and persistence to achieve a better performance in the later assessments, but also avoid high-stakes when they have a bad performance in an exam as subjective reasons.

In conclusion, I believe both of these kinds of examination have different advantages, but I think continual assessment do outweigh the formal examination.