Once students are asked to assess their own writing progress, they will begin to do their best for writing great prose instead of just great grades. Teachers will have to create a grade-free zone, allow students to set their own writing goals, provide a common language such as the Six Traits Model, and provide evaluation and instructional models…

Powers, Burstein, Chodorow, Fowles, and Kukich (2002) suggested that automated essay scoring (AES) may benefit from the use of "general" scoring models designed to score essays irrespective of the prompt for which an essay was written. They reasoned that such models may enhance score credibility by signifying that an AES system measures the same…

An authentic assessment embedded in a course becomes a teaching tool integral to the aims of the course, not simply a mandated test. The following are appended: (1) Our Initial Rubric for SUNY GE Assessment: Critical Thinking; and (2) Our Revised Rubric for SUNY GE Assessment: Critical Thinking. (Contains 4 notes.)

Educators often have to choose among different types of rating scales to assess second-language (L2) writing performance. There is little research, however, on how different rating scales affect rater performance. This study employed a mixed-method approach to investigate the effects of two different rating scales on EFL essay scores, rating…

The objective of the present investigation was to examine the comparability of writing prompts for different gender groups in the context of the computer-based Test of English as a Foreign Language[TM] (TOEFL[R]-CBT). A total of 87 prompts administered from July 1998 through March 2000 were analyzed. An extended version of logistic regression for…

Responding to student writing is one of the most challenging aspects of the writing instructor's job, and it is certainly the most time-consuming. Preparing future teachers to respond to L2 writing thus becomes an important aspect of any pre-service training course. In this paper, the author describes her own approach to training writing…

The writing performance of 64 elementary school children with a history of specific language impairment was examined to evaluate both the nature of the children's difficulties with writing and the relationship between oral language, reading, and writing. Children were assessed at age 8 on a range of language, literacy, and cognitive measures and…

Adult English as a second language (ESL) students learning English outside of traditional academic settings are an understudied population of second language learners. The purpose of the research reported here is to contribute to meeting the instructional needs of these students more effectively by investigating the relationships between their…

Within large scale educational assessment agencies in the UK, there has been a shift towards assessors marking digitally scanned copies rather than the original paper scripts that were traditionally used. This project uses extended essay examination scripts to consider whether the mode in which an essay is read potentially influences the…

In a more consistent and viable manner than ever before, education in Alabama is moving toward its ultimate goal of providing every student with a quality education, thereby preparing them for work, college, and life after high school. Alabama's graduation rates from 2002 to 2008 increased significantly, tripling the national average increase and…

This paper presents examples of rubrics that can be used in the assessment of the acquisition of generic skills in accounting education. A rubric is a matrix containing the various factors of an assignment along one dimension (rows) and descriptors of the qualitative levels of accomplishment along the other dimension (columns). A rubric can…

This paper explores how teachers who choose the New Literacy approach to the teaching of reading and writing reconcile the conflict between their need for personal pedagogical integrity and public demands for accountability. The paper's first section describes one teacher's changing conceptions of evaluation of student writing. The second section…

A study investigated the extent to which children consider writing strategies in relation to types of writing. Data were evolved by interviewing 48 fifth-grade children on their processes of evaluating other children's papers. Each child was asked to read paired texts, judge their comparative quality, and explain the basis of their judgments. They…

The summary information in this report provides teachers, school administrators, students, and the general public in Alberta, Canada with an overview of results from the January 1997 administration of the English 30 Diploma Examination. The information in the report is most helpful when used in conjunction with the detailed school and jurisdiction…

This paper argues for a direct, holistic assessment of writing of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students. Holistic writing assessment is the term used for tests that evaluate writing wholly through the production of writing. A holistic writing assessment has at least the following five characteristics: each individual taking the assessment must…