A multi-pronged comparative approach was used to identify training and development needs specific to faculty evaluators of prior learning experience essays. Surveys were administered to 39 active evaluators who were members of the National-Louis University (NLU) faculty and 14 directors of prior learning assessment programs external to NLU. The…

While the process of getting together a writing portfolio might help some students to understand how one is assembled, not all, or even most, graduates will have need to go through the process again in their lives. All the more reason, some would say, for them to do it now, but there are any number of reasons why this assumption should be…

High school students in Venezuela study English grammar and vocabulary for 5 years, but, because theirs is an oral culture, they do very little reading or writing either in their native language or in English. When students reach the university and begin to study composition, they are unmotivated to write essays on teacher assigned topics for a…

This book presents speeches and essays by Jane Addams, from the period between 1893 and 1930, that present a view of education as a broad process of cultural transformation and renewal, as the foundation of democracy. Among the topics presented are: (1) an exploration of some of the problems women faced upon graduating from college and returning…

In this collection, educators examine progressive education from both historical and practical standpoints, addressing the daily struggles confronting progressively oriented teachers as they create classrooms to support their values. After an introduction, "Class Values," by C. Montag, the following essays are presented: (1) "Large…

Essays for the Graduate Management Admissions Test must be written with a word processor (except in some foreign countries). The test sponsors, the Graduate Management Admissions Council, believed that this is fair because some word processing skill is a prerequisite for advanced management education. Furthermore, it might also be unfair to…

Compiled by a classroom teacher for classroom teachers, this book presents over 75 activities and over 140 associated worksheets designed to implement the process approach to writing in the fourth through eighth grade classroom. The book notes that process writing provides the student not only with a "recipe" for writing, but also with two…

Statistical and measurement properties are examined for features used in essay assessment to determine the generalizability of the features across populations, prompts, and individuals. Data are employed from TOEFL® and GMAT® examinations and from writing for Criterion?.

Information on the uses, advantages, and limitations of different types of test items is presented for college faculty, along with guidelines for developing test items. Included is advice on: choosing between objective and subjective test items, when essay tests or objective tests are appropriate, and when either essay or objective tests can be…

In Sweden the International Association Evaluation of Educational Achievement in written composition study involved 4,500 students from grades 6 and 9, as well as students from the terminal grades of the upper secondary school. Students wrote essays of various kinds and replied to questionnaires. Essays were evaluated according to content,…

Social studies assessment for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) should focus on students' oral and written discourse on social topics. Discourse is language produced by the student with the intention of providing a narrative, argument, explanation, or analysis. The assessment of discourse is important because: emphasis on…

Noting the general lack of attention to the teaching of nonfiction, this focused journal issue presents 11 articles containing suggestions for ways to incorporate various nonfiction materials into the English class. Article titles and authors in the journal are (1) "A Marriage that Works: Early American Literature in Context" (S. Bouley); (2)…

A history of the Test of Written English (TWE), a section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), describes its inception and development process. The new test is a thirty-minute essay test providing a measure of a non-native English-speaker's ability to perform academic writing tasks similar to those required of international…

This document presents information to trainers already trained in the Registered Holistic scoring method. It has been developed to assist these trainers in training others in the procedures and the criteria of the new scoring method. The Registered Holistic scoring method was designed and field tested for the ninth grade writing sample component…

Seven formats of educational testing were compared for student test preferences and how well each evaluated learning. The formats were: (1) true/false; (2) multiple choice; (3) matching; (4) MDT Multiple Digit Testing, in which a machine scores fill-in-the-blanks; (5) fill-in-the-blanks; (6) short answers; and (7) essay. A total of 1,440 survey…