How effective are essays as an academic genre? The case of examinations

The Grey Lit Café

Anthony Haynes writes: On The Grey Lit Café we frequently focus on specific genres.* In this episode, we focus on the genre of essays. In particular, we discuss the use of essays in examinations.
Engy Moussa (University of Cambridge) and I debate:

• the strengths and weaknesses of essays as an assessment tool
• multiple ways to help students improve the quality of their essays

*Examples include abstracts, blogs, book proposals, dissertations, emails, funding proposals, letters, online lectures, newsletters, pitches, preprints, podcasts, posters, reports, and white papers.
Further listening
We hope you found this episode rewarding. If so, you might find the following of particular interest:

• Dissertations and books: how are they related?
• On line lectures: Bart Hallmark on pitfalls and good practice

Reference
Stella Cottrell, The study skills handbook (Palgrave)
Credits

• Sound production: Bart Hallmark (who on this episode struggled nobly with poor recording quality!)
• Music: from Handel's Water Music, courtesy of the United States Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra

Support the show

About the publisher
This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.
We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).
To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.