Many local and state education agencies in the United States now mandate annual assessments of student writing ability. To comply with these mandates, schools across the country have developed a variety of assessment procedures. To determine the "state of the art" of large-scale writing assessment in the country, a questionnaire was sent…

The nine articles in this guide discuss the problems involved in teaching writing and offer suggestions for improving writing instruction. The first article presents responses given by educators to a nationwide survey concerning the causes of writing problems, concluding that until recently the biggest problems were untrained teachers and a lack…

One elementary school writing sample written to cue under a 5-minute time limit was presented to 33 teachers who had been trained to use a holistic and a primary trait writing sample assessment system. Working on the assumption that teachers would recognize mechanical errors on sight, training in mechanical control was limited to orientation…

Using data consisting of descriptive and expressive-narrative essays written in 1969 and 1979 by black 17-year-old students in the stratified probability sample from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a study investigated which language patterns differentiated the NAEP essays written by black students in 1969 from those…

Intended to help writing teachers create a classroom climate where real writing can be inspired, valued, and enjoyed, the WEDGE (Writing Every Day Generates Excellence) manual addresses first the problem of motivating students to communicate in writing, next, finding words and structures appropriate for clarity and eloquence, and finally, the…

Intended to provide South Carolina educators with a tool for curriculum and instructional development that complements the assessment of the state writing objectives, this guide focuses on that part of the curriculum reflected in the state basic writing skills objectives. The various sections in the first part of the guide: (1) discuss the…

A response to a piece of student writing will be most effective if it helps students consciously identify and solve their composing problems, stimulates them to use the response, and helps them to transfer these practiced skills. Furthermore, the response should (1) take place during the process of writing rather than after a piece is completed,…

A full-scale case study of a college freshman writing course was conducted that made inferences about the course, its direction, and design and described its apparent influence on the students. The study, which is described in this report, addressed: (1) instructional influences, (2) student performances, (3) instructors' and students' perceptions…

More than 100 individual and group activities, learning center ideas, and bulletin board suggestions are offered in this handbook for developing the writing skills of second, third, and fourth grade students. An analysis chart is provided as a diagnostic tool for determining the writing strengths and weaknesses of students. The activities are…

Intended to help writing teachers better understand how to help students effectively revise their written work, this book contains essays that, as a group, focus on the problem of the definition of revision. The first half of the book discusses the background of revision, while the second half discusses contexts and techniques for application. The…

Composition teachers can learn from nonteachers who evaluate writing. A comparison of nonteacher and teacher responses to the same student writing revealed that the teachers were much more negative in their evaluations. Studies have also indicated that teachers did not grade according to their own declared criteria. These inconsistencies and…

Prepared as part of a project designed to provide an objectively measured indication of the quality of student writing in one school district, this paper presents analyses of the syntactic complexity of the argumentative and narrative writing of more than 500 seventh and eighth grade students and of the mechanical errors found in that writing.…

The identification of critical writing skills was the first step in a project designed to specify language skills that should be included in instruments for assessing students' entry into and exit from bilingual classrooms. Writing skills were screened according to three criteria: appearance on state or local competency lists, textbook emphasis,…

The "nuts and bolts" of test construction concern the following areas: (1) common problems in test construction, (2) successful test formats, (3) specific testing concerns in the French individualized program (IFP) at the Ohio State University, and (4) references to help the test constructor. The specific problems considered deal with whether or…

Developed by teachers who had been trained in the teaching of the writing process, this curriculum guide is designed to help teachers gain the skills necessary for effective writing instruction. The seven sections of the guide provide the following information: (1) the basic assumptions and guidelines of the curriculum; (2) an explanation of the…