This article presents commentaries on being gay in Japan and China by distinguished educators with various backgrounds and from different countries. Given space limitations, these are more evocative than particulate, but collectively they provide multiple platforms for reflection. As noted by some commentators in this article and others (e.g.,…

This paper explores whether or not the simple addition of essay questions in examinations increased the learning of the sort normally tested by objective questions alone. Thirteen sections of a "United States History to 1877" class comprised the study group. The experimental group, consisting of nine sections, wrote essay questions on…

We implemented a series of three guided controversies to provide experience in environmental problem solving to students in a science course designed for nonmajors. Students wrote essays in response to their experiences in each controversy; we analyzed these essays for five problem-solving criteria. A questionnaire administered at the end of the…

In winter of 2004, the Sociology Department at California State University-Bakersfield (CSUB) conducted a student assessment using an embedded assessment technique--a technique wherein a class assignment serves as an assessment tool. The authors conducted the embedded assessment for their Five-Year Program Review. Thus, similar to many…

To describe their knowledge of assessment, specifically prepared scripts from 30 novice teachers were content analysed. Knowledge of the formative-summative mode was evident in all scripts but the connections made between this mode of assessment and the other principles of assessment were not well developed. Knowledge of assessment methods was…

The teaching and assessment of essay writing at primary schools throughout Vietnam is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Training. The analytical error-recognition method of assessment, however, does not facilitate direct interpretation of students' writing competence. In this study, which involved samples of Grade 5 students in five…

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) contains a direct writing assessment, and examinees are given the option of composing their responses at a computer terminal using a keyboard or composing their responses in handwriting. This study sought to determine whether performance on a direct writing assessment is comparable for examinees…

Writing assessment essentially juxtaposes two elements: how "good writing" is to be defined, and how "good measurement" of that writing is to be carried out. The timed test is often used in large-scale L2 writing assessments because it is considered to provide reliable measurement. It is, however, highly inauthentic. One way of enhancing…

This case study investigated the revising patterns and intentions in L1 and L2 of Japanese writers with various writing experiences. Three participants were selected through purposeful sampling to do within-case comparisons. One participant was an experienced writer in both Japanese and English; one was an experienced writer in Japanese, but not…

The University of South Carolina School of Medicine introduced a seminar in 2003 to teach communication and listening skills to third year medical students. The students learned a structured communication format called "L-I-S-T-E-N" which they utilized to conduct a life review with an adult over age 65. The faculty evaluated this…

Promoting collaboration skills and dispositions is widely encouraged currently in the field of teacher preparation. However, very few university classrooms incorporate collaboration into their assessment practices. One factor may be the perceived potential lack of soundness of such methodologies. This study is a qualitative examination of the…

Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is an automated, statistical technique for comparing the semantic similarity of words or documents. In this article, I examine the application of LSA to automated essay scoring. I compare LSA methods to earlier statistical methods for assessing essay quality, and critically review contemporary essay-scoring systems…

This study examined the construct validity of the "e-rater"® automated essay scoring engine as an alternative to human scoring in the context of TOEFL® essay writing. Analyses were based on a sample of students who repeated the TOEFL within a short time period. Two "e-rater" scores were investigated in this study, the first…

This article deals with the place of learner corpora, i.e. corpora containing authentic language data produced by learners of a foreign/second language, in English for academic purposes (EAP) pedagogy and sets out to demonstrate that they have a valuable contribution to make to the field. Following an initial brief introduction to corpus-based…

This study assessed the ability of high school advanced placement history students to choose the essay topic on which they can get the highest score. A second, equally important, question was whether the score on the chosen topic was more highly related to other indicators of proficiency in history than the score on the unchosen topic. Overall,…