Despite the increased use of integrated tasks in high-stakes academic writing assessment, research on rating criteria which reflect the unique construct of integrated summary writing skills is comparatively rare. Using a mixed-method approach of expert judgement, text analysis, and statistical analysis, this study examines writing features that…

While there is general agreement among learners, teachers, and scholars that constructive feedback on writing is necessary to revision, there are fewer consensuses on how feedback should be given, when, by whom, and what sort of feedback is most effective (Weigle, 2014). Providing feedback on writing is generally categorized into three types:…

Written communication remains an important learning objective for colleges and universities as more and more students enter the workforce without necessary writing skills and experiences. This importance is increased for public colleges and universities within the state of Texas, as that state has adopted written communication as a core learning…

Spelling skills have been identified as one of the major barriers to written text production in young English writers. By contrast oral language skills and text generation have been found to be less influential in the texts produced by beginning writers. To date, our understanding of the role of spelling skills in transparent orthographies is…

Written language is a complex set of skills that facilitate communication and that are developed in a predictable sequence. It is therefore possible to analyze current skills, identify deficits, plan interventions, and determine the effectiveness of the intervention. To effectively accomplish these tasks, educators need to choose appropriate…

Rubrics are an integral part of many writing programs, and they represent elements of good writing in essays, stories, poems, as well as other genres and forms of text. Although it is possible to use rubrics to teach students about the processes underlying effective writing, a more common practice is to use rubrics as a means of assessment, after…

While formal, standardized assessment instruments provide valuable and necessary information about students' various abilities and skills, the use of informal and qualitative assessment approaches has the benefit of leading directly to instruction based squarely on an individual student's needs, strengths, and existing skills. This article…

Over 2000 samples of the writing of eleven to eighteen year olds were analyzed as part of an attempt to formulate and validate a system for categorizing student writing. The system that resulted has two dimensions: the function served by the piece of writing and the audience to which it is addressed. Significant associations were found between the…

This article presents an overview of several written language assessment techniques, as well as a rationale and method for assessing the written expression of hearing-impaired individuals. Fluency, syntactic maturity, vocabulary, content, and conventions of notation are discussed; direct and indirect measures are compared; and a sample composition…

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability of the analytical method of grading essays in relation to the holistic method. It was hypothesized that the use of the analytic method to rate college composition papers produces high rater reliability at the expense of biasing the raters and thus lowering the validity of the grades. Six…

An evaluation procedure was formulated to ascertain the effectiveness of an emphasis on the clarity and interest appeal of a composition as opposed to its mechanical correctness in improving a child's written expression. A random sample of themes were submitted to a general evaluation of content by six criteria and a linguistic analysis by nine…

Ten objective measures of writing proficiency were used to evaluate advanced ESL students' compositions. Only those objective measures taking the absence of errors into account discriminated among holistic evaluations of the compositions by experienced ESL teachers. (PMJ)

The problem of this study was to find criteria, and a model, for judging written expression at the elementary level which can produce concordance of teacher judgments and be a possible basis for prescriptive teaching. Such a model was developed by the Affton School District. This study attempts to determine its utility. Twenty-four essays were…

A study of 943 personal narratives of students with deafness evaluated the effectiveness of the Six-Trait Analytical Scale in assessing student's writing. The scale was found to be reliable and valid in evaluating written narratives of students with and without hearing losses and is recommended as a valuable diagnostic instrument and instructional…

Good writers, as compared to a randomly-chosen comparison group, spent more time in both prewriting and writing, revised more, re-read more often during writing, and were more concerned with the purpose of their writing. (JH)