Sixty consequential writing tasks are described in this source book to help elementary and secondary school students develop their abilities in written composition. The activities foster thinking by posing game-like writing problems that require students to use their minds in the ways that good writers do, and to solve the problems that good…

This report contains information on the 1980 Basic Skills Assessment Writing Sample that the New Mexico State Department of Education administered to over 1,000 tenth grade students. Sections of the report provide the following information: (1) background data and an explanation of holistic scoring, which was used in the assessment; (2)…

Treating all major aspects of the writing assessment process, this manual is designed to help school districts evaluate writing in order to improve students' writing skills. The first major section of the manual presents background information on general measurement issues, such as evaluating writing ability by means of direct and indirect…

A model for assessing student writing achievement uses sets of criteria to chart students' writing progress that are based on a study of exemplary samples of student writing produced at various stages of development. The model provides a viable alternative to assessment methods that call for students to produce lengthy essays on preselected topics…

Presents the idea that many tactics sports coaches use in training and improving athletes' performance can be adapted for the instruction of remedial writers. (JC)

The summary writing skills of 30 hearing-impaired and 30 normally hearing college students were analyzed. Compared to controls, hearing-impaired students included opinions in their summaries more often, included important ideas less often, selected or created topic sentences less often, and integrated ideas within and among paragraphs less often.…

Argues that instructors might have more success in teaching analysis and exposition--public forms of writing--if the autobiographical writing of undergraduates were viewed primarily as a private way to find ideas, not always as material itself to be shaped into public autobiographical prose. (MS)

Explores the history of testing, motivations for testing, testing procedures, and the inevitable limitations of testing. Argues that writing program faculty and administrators must clarify and profess their values, decide what they want students to know and what sort of thinkers they should be, and develop tests reflecting those needs. (SR)

Writing is central to learning and to evaluation of student progress. Holistically scored writing samples, portfolios, and evaluative grids provide effective assessments of writing proficiency and show students that writing is an essential communication skill. Writing assignments also can be used to evaluate learning in a discipline. (Author)

Reports on a study which viewed writing instruction as an interactive social process between the teacher and students. Written responses to student writing assignments assessed content rather than accuracy of spelling or grammar. States that written feedback encouraged greater quantity and quality of writing with spelling accuracy being maintained…

Investigates the effects of two types of written comments on student compositions and learning of course content. Supports the idea that content comments seem to help students write better essays. Suggests that writing reflectively and thoughtfully about a topic increases learning of that topic. (JK)

Analyzes the editing behavior of skilled and less skilled writers. Results show that while the more skilled writers almost always corrected more errors than the less skilled, the two groups performed similarly on their own essays where neither corrected many errors at all. (SRT)

Describes the implementation of a content area writing program in a middle school. Observes that many teachers were resistant to the task and passed their frustration on to the English teachers. However, most were pleased with the improvement in students' writing due to the increase in the amount of required writing. (SRT)

Describes a study of the interrelationships among three tests (a standardized English-as-a-second-language test, a cloze test, and a written composition test) which sought to determine whether adding the cloze test to the ESL test would improve the predictability of students' communicative proficiency, as reflected in their writing test…

Describes a program created by members of the English department at Youngstown State University that achieves the goal of fostering cooperation between universities, area schools, and the community at the same time that it demonstrates the potential of raising the levels of basic writing skills and stimulating a desire to read. (HOD)