A commonly held belief among educators, researchers, and students is that high-quality texts are easier to read than low-quality texts, as they contain more engaging narrative and story-like elements. Interestingly, these assumptions have typically failed to be supported by the literature on writing. Previous research suggests that higher quality…

This article reports results of a corpus-based evaluation of 14 syntactic complexity measures as objective indices of college-level English as a second language (ESL) writers' language development. I analyzed large-scale ESL writing data from the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (Wen, Wang, & Liang, 2005) using a computational system…

This handbook describes the responsibilities of district and school assessment coordinators in the administration of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). This updated guidebook contains the following sections: (1) General Assessment Guidelines for All Assessments; (2) Writing Specific Guidelines; (3) Reading and Mathematics…

Essay tests are widely used to assess ESL/EFL learners' writing abilities for instructional, administrative, and research purposes. Relevant literature was searched to identify 70 empirical studies on ESL/EFL essay tests. The majority of these studies examined task, essay, and rater effects on essay rating and scores. Less attention has been given…

This column examines issues associated with measuring assistive technology outcomes in writing. Following an introduction to assistive technology and writing, it looks specifically at design, measurement, analysis, and decision making factors in the process of creating an outcomes system for measuring the impact of assistive technology on writing.…

Designed to assess students' attitudes toward writing, this scale contains 40 items representing three categories: preference for writing, perception of writing, and process of writing. Respondents circle one of five points ranging from "almost always" to "almost never." Validity, reliability, and normative data are included.…

Designed to identify and tabulate the various cohesive ties in writing, this instrument is a tabulation sheet for recording all instances of cohesive ties. The sheet includes columns for recording the cohesive word, the number of the sentence in which it appears, the referent of the cohesive word, and the number of the sentence in which it…

Several studies have shown that essays receive higher marks when preceded by poor quality scripts than when preceded by good quality scripts. This study investigated the effectiveness of providing scorers with model essays to reduce the influence of context. Context effects persisted despite the scoring procedures used. (Author/EGS)

The review of the Test of Written Language-2 (TOWL-2) raises concerns about alternate forms reliability, subtest reliability, content validity, and omissions. It concludes that the TOWL-2 is an expanded and greatly modified version of the original test but may not be appropriate for identifying a student's specific writing problems. (DB)

Designed to describe and assess the activities engaged in between a writing tutor and a student in a one-to-one writing conference, this survey contains two forms. The first records the student's major, native language, source of the writing task with which he or she needs help, and the student's perception of the problem. The second form, filled…

Designed to evaluate the degree to which an essay is successful in giving information, this instrument is an analytic/holistic scoring guide for evaluating any writing that contains generalizations supported by elaboration. The following criteria are applied: (1) relevance--any statement that gives information or elaborates on information already…

A difficulty associated with the use of Golub and Frederick's syntactic density score was the time required in hand tabulation. This drawback was resolved with the development by Kidder of a computer program which calculates a syntactic density score for writing samples. The purpose of this study was to examine the sensitivity of the Syntactic…

Designed as a criterion-referenced scale to describe levels of writing skill development for basic essay elements, this instrument provides separate six-point rating scales for general competence of a narrative essay and the levels of development of focus and organization, support, and grammar/mechanics. The mechanics scale includes a brief guide…

Designed as a criterion-referenced scale to describe levels of writing skill development for basic essay elements, this instrument provides separate six-point rating scales for general impression of the quality of an essay, general competence, coherence, paragraph organization, support for main ideas, and mechanics. Validity, reliability and…

Based on a preliminary version of this study, project aims were to learn what college freshmen knew about presidents in office from the late 19th century to the present and to determine the students' writing levels. During the first class of each of five semesters, students enrolled in an American History Since 1985 course were asked to write one…