"There seems to be an increasing trend towards assessing students through exams rather than continual assessment. What are the advantages and disadvantages of exams as a form of assessment?"

The percentage of using exams as assessment subject rise rapidly through these years. Major arguing about it effectiveness and traditional continual assessment would be much better rather than taking tests, quizzes and so on, while other strongly agree with using exams. Both sides have arguments and in this essay will described pros and cons of each side. First of all, the exam is most comfortable form of checking the current knowledge in short time. For instance, it better to take short quiz from whole class in one time rather than asking each student personally. Moreover, it can include only main points of syllabus and as a result it increases the probability of effective learning new material. In contrast, research shows that this kind of evaluating make students more stressful, since they under the pressure of "unknown". The most of them are not sure what expect and what kind of questions will appear, so it makes them study huge (in some way unnecessary) material to pass and get at least average mark. To sum up, exams save time, by scanning grasp of kids in an instant and reduce the big number of unwanted information. Despite all these advantages examination form of assessing has also drawbacks, such as forcing students to struggle with vast learning material.