In order to examine how large-scale testing affects writing pedagogy and students' composition processes, the author conducted a study that centered on two high school senior English classes in the state of Kentucky. Since 1991, Kentucky has implemented a large-scale writing assessment and system of teacher and school accountability. Generating…

Many students have difficulty in educational and employment settings because they have failed to master basic writing skills. Multiple-baseline across-tasks designs were used to evaluate the effects of the Comprehensive Writing Program (CWP), a multicomponent intervention, on the writing performance of all students (n = 17) from 3 9th-grade…

The purpose of this research is to analyze preservice teachers' use of and reactions to an automated essay scorer used within an online, case-based learning environment called ETIPS. Data analyzed include post-assignment surveys, a user log of students' actions within the cases, instructor-assigned scores on final essays, and interviews with four…

This case study offers an in-depth look at how one school achieved change in its culture and in its approach to curriculum and instruction. The unit of analysis for this single case study is South Loop Elementary School (SLES) and the time period is from August 2002 to June of 2007, during which SLES students demonstrated sharply improved…

Performance assessments have become the norm for evaluating language learners' writing abilities in international examinations of English proficiency. Two aspects of these assessments are usually systematically varied: test takers respond to different prompts, and their responses are read by different raters. This raises the possibility of undue…

Advances in assessment technologies are affording teachers and students new ways to efficiently assess and track achievement while also better promoting learning. WriteToLearn is one such technology, a Web-based tool that integrates practice and assessment in reading comprehension with writing about what is learned. Based on the principle of…

Much has been written about evaluating student writing in the composition classroom, but there is still a tendency, in the creative writing classroom, to enact unanswered assumptions about what makes a story or a poem "good." If experimental or postmodern fictional writing is not inherently apolitical, neither is it inherently political,…

A study explored the effect of different kinds of music on children's writing content. Nineteen students from a second grade class in Charlottesville, Virginia, participated in 10 15-minute writing sessions, accompanied in each session by one type of background music (classical, jazz, popular, or country) or by silence. All writing was analyzed…

Many educators, students, parents and other taxpayers rely on the perception that literacy is some narrowly defined ideal, and that students must all conform to that ideal to become successful, (in other words) productive citizens. Sharon Crowley posits two ways of thinking about texts. In one, texts are discursive bits produced to engender more…

A study investigated whether college students' writing skills have deteriorated in recent years. Writing samples from upper-level undergraduate or first-year graduate courses from 1956 (at a public university), 1965 (at a private university), and from 1978 and 1993 (at a private college) were examined. Samples were analyzed for errors in spelling,…

Emphasizing the writing product rather than process, this paper presents two writing samples each for three students and evaluates them using five questions: (1) What are the strengths of the paper? (2) What are the weaknesses? (3) What are the apparent differences between the two writing samples? (4) What other information do you need about this…

Claiming that literary newswriting is not a contradiction in terms, that is, an oxymoron, this essay examines some of the criteria against which literary newswriting can be measured, defines what constitutes literary newswriting in contemporary newspapers, and explains how it contributes to modern newswriting. The paper argues that (1) modern…

This examination of an evaluation of writing based on process rather than on product argues that one of the primary functions of evaluation as a part of teaching should be to diagnose the writing strategies that underlie a writer's current performance, not just textual problems. The first half of the paper discusses the various ways teachers use…

This report discusses a plan to help Georgia school systems develop their own evaluation instruments for student writing. The report indicates that the use of actual writing samples in assessing writing skills can be valid, reliable, and economical. It includes attachments with sample writing scores from a school, the purposes and statistics that…

The discrepancy in the application of terminology in labeling systems for scoring writing samples is discussed in this paper and current scoring systems that exclude frequency counts of writing features are described. Two-thirds of the paper discusses and gives examples of general impression, marking, analytic scale scoring, and primary trait…