The approaches used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to characterize syntax, cohesion and mechanics are described. These approaches are different from the Primary Trait System, a scheme used by NAEP for rating essays. Part one of the publication describes the procedures NAEP used to characterize differences in syntactic…

In the area of large scale assessment, there is increasing interest in the measurement of students' written performance. At issue is whether the task demands in writing assessment can be simplified to involve the production of paragraph-length writing samples and/or multiple choice testing, rather than full-length essays. This study considers data…

A study was conducted to examine how composition characteristics identified on the Diederich scale (ideas, organization, wording, flavor, usage/sentence structure, and punctuation) related to teacher evaluation of student writing. For each of three academic years, teaching assistants of freshman English were given typed, mimeographed copies of…

A study designed to examine the differences in quality ratings that 20 teachers in each of three senior high school curricular areas (business, English/social studies, and mathematics/science) gave to samples of written argument by college freshmen also investigated the relationship between the three groups of quality ratings and eight syntactic…

Investigated relationships between individual differences in (1) levels of writing skills and (2) proficiencies at simultaneous and successive cognitive processing. Correlated students' writings with the following word and sentence level problems: spelling errors, missing or inappropriate punctuation of sentence parts, missing noun and verb…

Investigation of examiners' (N=44) evaluations of writing performance of learning-disabled (LD) students indicated that the LD label influenced ratings assigned by examiners (undergraduate education students) who were simply familiarized with the scoring procedure. Evaluations by examiners who received additional practice and training were not…

Discusses three books that approach writing assessment from differing perspectives and will help writing program administrators reconsider purposes, anticipate problems, and envision new possibilities for writing evaluation. (HTH)

Proposes that students' problems controlling the rhetorical features of school discourse (inventing a purpose within one's writing that will also serve the external purpose of impressing a grader) are as fundamental to the difficulties of basic writers in college writing as their syntactical and mechanical errors. (SR)

In contrast to traditional practices in reading and writing assessment which focus on fragmented, isolated skills, a holistic approach to assessment is recommended. Children's reading and writing are seen as communicative behaviors which are effectively evaluated through systematic observation as they occur in natural settings. (JW)

Claims "Responsive Teaching" is a useful conferencing procedure which expects writers to evaluate and refine their own writing, and tries not to side-track the self-evaluation once it begins. (MS)

Claims the primary trait scoring method offers an efficient and effective way to grade student papers. Also suggests primary trait scoring can be useful for commenting on rough drafts, and for evaluating assignments throughout the business communication curriculum. (MS)

Asserts that requiring students in feature writing courses to tape record interviews and submit them with their articles improves the quality and accuracy of quotations, as well as overall story quality. (MM)

Describes recent advances in writing analysis and their implications for English as a second language writing instruction. The principal theme emphasized is that text analysis of written products, which complements process-centered research, is needed for an integrated theory of writing. (Author/CB)

Describes how a seventh-grade teacher was able to devise a final examination that both reflected the goals of his process-oriented writing class and met the requirements of his school board. (ARH)

Compares cohesive ties and chains in the good and poor essays of college freshmen. Results indicate that longer chains, greater variety of words, and greater maturity or word choice characterize good writing. (SRT)