Test-Score Reliability of Essay Questions in BA Examination

Writing is one of the basic language skills. Both objective tests and essay questions can be used to evaluate students’ performance in the writing skill. The objective tests are generally considered useful as they help in measuring certain abilities accurately and they yield reliable scores. But essay tests can be used more effectively to measure certain complex learning outcomes such as organization, synthesis, and analysis. Essays provide an effective form of testing to evaluate the communicative skill of students at the higher level. Such items have the problems of consistency, objectivity, and reliability of their scores. The present study focuses on the issue of scorer reliability and attempts to suggest an objective model of scoring for the free-response essay question set in the B.A. examination for Islamia University of Bahawalpur in the subject of English compulsory.