Prompt: Only formal examinations, written or practical, can give a clear picture of students' true knowledge and ability at university level. Continuous assessment like course work and projects are poor measures of student ability. How far do you agree with this latter statement?

The debate about how to assess ability of students at university is one of the most difficult problems needed to deal with. Some people argue only formal examinations is the best way that can be used to measure students' knowledge exactly. However, I believe that other types of examination like course work and projects are not less important than formal examinations because of following reasons. Ċ First, using only formal examination is not enough to test knowledge of students. Teachers do not enable to know whether the students do the work himself. Ideas that students used to write in their exams may be collected from internet easily. Thus, the teachers can ignore the possibility that student stole the ideas from internet or somewhere else if they only use this type of examination. The problem then is that worker will be produced without enough quality. Ċ Second, continuous assessment should be used throughout a course to know fully ability of students. There are students who know information that they are asked to write about very well, however they do not perform well. In other hand, if students are not accessed on all aspects, then they will not do well their work. And as a result, it affects heavily on the labor market. Ċ To conclude, the best way to access ability of students is a combination of both forms of assessment. The grades given to each type of assessment depend on kind of the course. Using both types of examination to access students' knowledge, the teacher will know details about what student have written.