Details some of the advantages provided by a testing service that evaluates student writing. (NKA)

Analysis of the spelling errors of three college students with varying writing abilities and a history of spelling problems suggests that students must be taught spelling remediation along with vocabulary development and writing, with emphasis on helping students understand the underlying logic and regularity of the writing system and effective…

Essays and essay tests need to be a central feature of every class. Informing students about what is inadequate in their essays and counseling them on how to improve seem to be impossible, time-consuming tasks. The use of codes or abbreviations is described. (MLW)

Impression marking of English Language essay and summary questions by pairs of examiners is shown, as expected, to be more reliable than single marking. Given the limited statistical information available, it is concluded that pairing of examiners can as well be done by random or quasi-random means as by attempts at calculated matching. (Editor/RK)

Recent, renewed interest in the personal in writing and teaching suggests that the late Jim Corder still has much to tell us. Editors James Baumlin and Keith Miller argue that Corder's yet-to-be-absorbed theory and scholarly praxis can contribute significantly to current debates in composition studies, especially because Corder struggles to move…

This presentation explored the nature of hypertextual or electronically enhanced essays. The purpose of the presentation was to illustrate the change in academic writing which is occurring because of electronic text forms and hyper-linking. The author attempted to show that academic writing (and the culture surrounding writing) is becoming more…

This paper is part of a larger project which explored the impact of writing across institutional boundaries via e-mail on freshman students enrolled in several schools and universities located in Tennessee--Bryan College, Columbia State Community College, and Middle Tennessee State University. The paper explains that in addition to their regular…

To ensure fairness, it is of critical importance that testing programs make sure that essay items given to examinees are equivalent in difficulty. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the stability and accuracy of a logistic regression based polytomous essay difficulty index. Preliminary results from a simulation study (9 conditions with a…

An investigation of how feedback from previous objectives tests affects risk-taking on subsequent essay tests. (JC)

Investigates the influence of handwriting style and composition errors on the marking of essays. (DS)

Evaluation problems in a college mathematics course for students of the social and life sciences are discussed. (MM)

Special issue honoring Luis Rosales, contemporary Spanish poet. (DS)