The decision of whether to use essay tests or multiple choice tests depends on several qualifiers related to the different characteristics of the tests and the needs of the situation. The most important qualifier involves matching the type of test to the instructional objectives being tested, with multiple choice tests being used to measure a…

Twenty-one learning-disabled eighth and eleventh graders wrote essays and answered a questionnaire concerning metacognition. Subjects were comparable to normally achieving sixth graders in their essays' interestingness, clarity in communication of goals, word choice, paragraph structure, and metacognition about the writing process. (Author/JDD)

Argues that assignments requiring the student to write in a specific genre stimulate formation and retention of critical concepts about the genre. A classroom experiment compared the results of a sonnet-writing assignment with a traditional essay-writing assignment about sonnets, confirming the effectiveness of the experiential approach.…

Three installments of "Writing Assignment of the Month," a regular feature of the National Council of Teachers of English publication, "Notes Plus," are presented in this compilation. The articles describe writing exercises which have proven to be successful in the classroom. The first article gives suggestions for introducing…

Uses handwriting samples of 12 undergraduates to explore whether teachers give higher marks to students' work in good handwriting and whether the students' gender may be surmised by their handwriting. Results show grading is not influenced by handwriting quality and finds no effect of gender attribution on grades assigned. (NL)

Considering the complicating effect of cultural differences in writing conventions, this study examines discourse tradition as influenced by Confucian/Taoist precepts and those of U.S. academic environments, the latter requiring rational argumentation, justification, and proof. Pedagogical implications of native-speaker and nonnative-speaker…

This book offers specific how-to advice to college faculty on every stage of the testing process, including planning the test and classifying objectives to be measured, ensuring the validity and reliability of the test, and grading in such a way as to arrive at fair grades based on relevant data. The book examines the strengths and weaknesses of…

A study examined how college professors reacted to non-native English-speaking students' academic writing. It looked specifically at (1) their rating on a 10-point scale of content versus language of an essay written by non-native-speaking students; (2) their rank ordering of comprehensibility, acceptability, and irritation for errors; (3) how…

Problems inherent in the holistic scoring of essay examinations written by limited-English-speakers are examined, particularly in the context of one California state college in which English writing skills, holistically assessed, are required for graduation. These problems include lack of interrater reliability, raters' perceptions of their role,…