Offers a framework for analyzing lexical cohesion in academic discourse based on a previous model for analysis of conversational and literary discourse. Discusses the implications of this new framework for teaching expository reading/writing and for research. (HTH)

Using essays written by twelfth grade students, a study explored the relationship of Halliday and Hasan's system for analyzing cohesion and instructors' ranking of textual coherence. (HOD)

Reports on a study that compared the potential validity, reliability, and costs of several direct and indirect measures of writing. (HOD)

The accuracy issues involved in detecting student writing skill deficiencies, factors to be dealt with or controlled, and procedural and statistical methods for controlling these factors are the focus of this article. The accuracy needed for effective instructional planning requires stability in writing assessment programs. (DWH)

Points out that untrained peer editors, because they are not familiar with the genre of student writing, are inexperienced in critically reading text. Makes suggestions for ways to train peer editors. (FL)

Reports on the application of six criteria to determine writing ability among secondary school students. Offers suggestions for instructing a class of students with wide variations in writing skill. (MM)

Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Ira Shor have been criticized as theorists not concerned with the institutional realities of American education (e.g., grades and standardized exams). This paper argues that these teacher-researchers speak to the issues encountered in developing electronic portfolios in high schools and colleges. The imposition of…

No longer little children, but not yet teenagers, tweens are beginning to see themselves as autonomous while still struggling to understand where they fit in. It can also be an awkward time for teachers who cherish the hilarious and poignant personalities of tween writers, but feel pressured by a new emphasis on testing in the intermediate grades.…

Designed for a broad audience in education, this book offers a realistic look at the wide range of teaching contexts and how writing teachers adapt their pedagogy to their particular circumstances. Specific topics highlighted by individual essays include: basic writing, service learning, online writing, revision, research writing, proofreading and…

This paper advances a taxonomy of college writing styles based on a broad spectrum of writing research. The taxonomy focuses on the constructs of deep and surface writing and the role of selfhood in affecting writing strategies and outcomes. It compares constructs such as reflective versus reproductive, hierarchical versus linear, active versus…

Writing instructors must first examine the ways in which they are currently making written comments to become more effective in fostering improved student writing. Three heuristic rubrics form the basis for a guided self-assessment rubric for writing instructors. The first rubric is based on the work of Elaine O. Lees (1979) and involves…

Sometimes an assessment program becomes well-established, nationally recognized, "proven" effective, and thus stuck in its routines and reasoning, becoming just another university bureaucracy for the teachers and students who work within it. The pedagogical question was how to keep an assessment program, or writing program for that…

This paper provides an overview of some recent work in automated essay scoring that focuses on writing improvement at the postsecondary level. The paper illustrates the Vantage Intellimetric (tm) automated essay scorer that is being used as part of a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) project that uses technology to grade…

This official scoring guide for writing presents details of the 6-point scoring system used in Oregon schools for the 1989-99 school year. It list attributes of students' responses to merit a score from 1 (lowest) to 6 (highest) in the areas of ideas/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and citing sources. (RS)

This portfolio book provides an actual step-by-step complete system of writing assessment from the ground up and across all grade levels. The book suggests that teachers purposefully gather student portfolios, reflect meaningfully on them, and then validly and reliably rate them with statistical success that will also feed meaningfully back into…