The Strategy Essay exam writing should be treated like any other skill that students need to develop. Teachers cannot automatically expect students to know how to create appropriate responses to essay items. Elicit from students ways that essay items require thinking that is different from objective items. Students are asked to use information, rather than merely recall what they've learned, as they formulate their answers. Students are often asked to clarify their understandings of a concept, to draw conclusions, to make generalizations, to perceive connections between facts.
Students have a greater opportunity to express their personal understandings of important material.
These attributes can be summarized by noting that essay items ask students to demonstrate their thinking as well as display their knowledge. Next familiarize students with the variety of question types that will be encountered on essay tests. Typically, students do not know the specific questions for essay exams ahead of time, and they may not even have prior knowledge of the topics about which they will be asked to write. Initially, as you prepare students, it is therefore helpful to provide them with an essay question in advance of the test. A word association web is an excellent stimulus for generating those key terms for an essay answer.