Against these arguments one might say that those who have mastered the art of essay writing in L1 and know how to structure an academic essay will have an advantage over others. This may not seem important for students of modern languages since they will in any case need to master essay-writing skills for non-language elements of their programme, but students of other disciplines who are studying a language as a supplementary element may well be at a disadvantage and need support in this area.

As we have seen in discussing marking criteria, essays are harder to mark fairly, however good the criteria might be. Objectivity can never be achieved; no matter how closely one follows criteria, it is difficult to avoid subjective judgements. Two colleagues using the same criteria to mark the same essay can sometimes come up with significantly different marks.

Essays also take a lot more time to write and to mark. Consequently, their use can limit how much of a module is assessed; for example, on a typical language course, an essay might test students' knowledge of the language relating to, at best, two or three topic areas.

Furthermore, it is easy to allow our marking to be influenced unduly by a preceding essay of particularly high quality, thus raising our expectations of the next one.