Discusses the results of a survey to gather information on the state of the art of testing writing proficiency at the college level. According to the results, many respondents did note positive side effects of the unprecedented growth in testing, particularly its influence on the direction of writing curricula. (HTH)

Suggests that those who feel the need for competency testing in their program should find or construct a test that reflects the faculty's expectations, locate a coordinator to put the test into the curriculum, and find ways to bring the marginal student up to expectations. (EL)

Discusses the growing interest in competency testing in writing at the college level, the growing dependence on minimal essays as the norm for "correct" composition, and the resulting decline in grace and style in college composition. (Author/HTH)

Reports on the steps undertaken and the discoveries made by the English department of Illinois State University in its development of a valid, reliable measure of student competency in freshman composition. (HOD)

Argues that writing apprehension can be dispositional, but that it can also arise in response to elements in the writing situation. Discusses the elements in timed writing competence tests that can trigger writing apprehension and hinder effective writing. (JK)

Discusses the design and scoring of the writing proficiency exam conducted at San Francisco State University. Explains the program's counseling system for those students who do not pass the proficiency exam. (HTH)

Because of consistent faculty involvement from its earliest stages, the writing assessment program at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) represents a competent, fair, and useful procedure for the large-scale testing and evaluation of student writing. UMKC's assessment curriculum builds on the existing sequence of three composition…

Reported in this monograph are the results from a survey of composition teachers in the City University of New York (CUNY). The questionnaire used for the survey sought (1) to obtain quantitative data about teachers' instructional practices and about their perceptions of the impact of the Writing Skills Assessment Test (WSAT) of minimum writing…

The reliability of the Writing Skills Assessment Test (WSAT) given to all entering freshmen at the City University of New York (CUNY) is the subject of this monograph. The monograph states that although the WSAT is scored according to validated and widely-used holistic procedures, some CUNY faculty had expressed concern about aspects of the WSAT's…

A cooperative writing assessment program between a college and seven public school districts was designed to demonstrate that the writing skills necessary for adequate composing were not those that could be measured by an objective test. The goals of the program were to (1) analyze the rhetorical skills of sixth and eighth grade students, (2)…

Analyzes the case of a Vietnamese-speaking science student who has repeatedly failed an English competency examination that analyzes essay content, rhetorical organization, and preparation for writing. Raises questions regarding the purposes, development, and evaluation of writing competency tests. (RDS)

In order to establish competency based entrance requirements for freshman composition, a midwestern university sampled six freshman composition and four basic writing classes for errors in their essay writing. ACT English and social studies scores and several reading scores were also gathered. All this data was computer analyzed by the multiple…

The effect of increased writing or planning time on a test of basic college level writing ability was studied. The essay portion of the New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test was given to students in nine New Jersey public colleges and three New Jersey public high schools. Each student wrote two essays on two different topics. The first…

The hypothesis that role-playing scenarios specifying full rhetorical contexts were a superior means of eliciting valid writing samples for the purpose of assessing compositional skills of prospective Florida teachers was tested. In addition, topics for use on the initial administrations of the Florida Teacher Competency Examination's writing…

The development of the City University of New York's writing assessment test is discussed in this paper. Its relationship to the total freshman skills assessment program, which also involves the assessment of minimal competencies in mathematics and reading, is related. The discussion of the test includes descriptions of the test development…