This report presents results from an internal evaluation conducted between September 1981 and August 1982 of abstracts published by the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) system. A brief introduction describes the study methodology and reviews limitations, indicating that 526 evaluations of 349 abstracts were conducted by personnel at…

Reviews the ERIC documents that examine teachers experiencing the writing process and that describe the format of workshop and inservice programs that seek to involve teachers in writing. (JL)

Uses resources from the ERIC system to show teachers strategies for making teacher commentary count in writing evaluation and to discuss the characteristics of effective writing evaluations. (EL)

Examines some of the variables that have been found to affect topic choice and writing performance in writing assessment. (FL)

Examines ERIC materials on the nature of and supporting the use of invented spelling in elementary school writing. (HTH)

This book describes a procedure for scoring writing samples with holistic methods and for analyzing the results with methods from primary trait scoring, analytical scoring, and discourse scoring. Following an introduction, the four chapters in the book focus on (1) the selection of topics to be used in a writing assessment, (2) the format for…

This digest describes the three most prominent approaches to essay scoring by computer: (1) Project Essay Grade (PEG), introduced by E. Page in 1966; (2) Intelligent Essay Assessor (IEA), introduced for essay grading in 1997 by T. Landauer and P. Foltz; and (3) e-rater, used by the Educational Testing Service and developed by J. Burstein. PEG…

Intended for administrators and policymakers as well as teachers, this digest explores approaches to, problems with, and trends in large scale writing assessment. The digest first compares direct and indirect assessment approaches, then examines three approaches to scoring: holistic, primary trait, and analytic. It then discusses issues and…

Civic writing is an intellectual skill that is needed for effective and responsible participation in civil society and government. This Digest examines the concept of civic writing, identifies its purposes in democratic citizenship, and discusses how to teach it. Civic writing includes formal legal writing (speeches, petitions, resolutions),…

This Digest provides a rationale for developing grading guides to use with business writing students. It describes the methods business communications teachers can use to construct and employ guides to provide students with quality writing instruction. The Digest maintains that teachers can construct either skills analysis grading guides and/or…

During the summer of 1990, a university English education professor in Indiana responded to the writing of 20 fourth through seventh graders via a computer installed in his home. The students wrote daily anything ranging from a 3-line haiku to 10-20 computer-screen stories. The classroom teacher took the students through the steps in the writing…

The principal goals of the State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport's large-scale writing assessment are to determine if a writing program actually helps students to write better and, if so, whether that growth can be measured during the college years. Portfolio assessment has become an attractive alternative to single-test essay at SUNY…

A case can be made for teachers to use audience-oriented teaching strategies that encourage children to write for a wide range of readers. Even so, questions remain about how writers, especially student writers, actually learn to consider an audience of readers when they write. Research suggests that a developmental trend exists in which children…

Examines materials in the ERIC system related to trends in grammar instruction. Discusses the efficacy of formal grammar instruction in the schools and presents activities for successfully integrating grammar instruction into the writing curriculum. (HTH)

Applicable to all levels of education, the eight digests and four FAST (Focused Access to Selected Topics) bibliographies included in this special collection focus on testing and assessment in the fields of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The material in this special collection is designed for use by teachers, students, administrators,…