This booklet has two purposes: to illustrate and compare two important levels of expectation, or standards, set for the Alberta English 30 diploma examination writing (Satisfactory and Excellent) and to provide suggestions to help students move beyond the Satisfactory level by developing their unrealized writing potential. Sample papers from…

This booklet has two purposes: to illustrate and compare two important levels of expectation, or standards, set for the Alberta (Canada) English 33 diploma examination writing ("Satisfactory" and "Excellent") and to provide suggestions to help students move beyond the Satisfactory level developing their unrealized writing…

The status of women in college and employment, the attitudes of mature-age alumni, individualized instruction, unsuccessful innovations, and grading are addressed in five articles in this issue of an Australian journal. "Women in Advanced Education, Advancement for Whom?" (Jan Craney, Carol O'Donnell) cites evidence to indicate that the…

In considering the use of open education to meet the needs of present and future generations, this article attempted to answer a few basic questions: 1) Why will not the old ways do? 2) Where is it all leading? 3) What are the characteristics of this new system? 4) What should this new system be like? (Author/RK)

Recent research on effects of different ways of marking student compositions is reviewed.

Asking students to select materials for tests, prepare them, score them, and analyze them is a valuable learning experience. (RC)

Contests the value of daily performance grades as a replacement for formal testing. Course modification and testing change are seen as more effective, and it is noted that recitation grades or punitive grading for absence are often overly harsh and unjust. (CHK)

Discusses a system for evaluating student performance in the language laboratory, grading for comprehension and correctness, with four categories: complete, limited, severely limited, unsatisfactory. Evaluation of laboratory performance is more objective, being based on what has been taught and learned under stable conditions. (Text is in German.)…

This article deals with the role in the preparation of foreign language teaching materials of error analysis and of the selection and ordering of linguistic features to be learned. The value for language teaching of contrastive analysis at the morphosyntactic and phonological levels is discussed. (CLK)

A testing technique is reported for testing oral production which attempts to combine the advantages of the interview test and the standardized, discrete-point test and to improve standardization of tests of oral production. (RM)

Recent years have seen widespread adoption of automatic grading of physics homework problems. Although first-generation homework management systems provide feedback and assign scores based only on the answers, problem-solving performance on exams seems to be no worse for students using these systems than for those who receive detailed comments…

Impromptu writing on tests is a useful way to evaluate student comprehension and encourage students to use critical thinking skills. Students' performance on essay tests can improve, and teachers' time required for grading can decrease through the use of an adapted holistic grading scale that clearly states expectations. First, a carefully written…

The assessment competencies set forth in this monograph are knowledge and skills critical to a teacher's role as an educator. It is suggested that the seven standards described as essential for educational assessment of students be incorporated into future teacher training and certification programs. The standards require that teachers be skilled…

An investigation of teacher paperwork sought to determine the relationship between quantity and types of paperwork and the subject taught and school type. A total of 58 teachers logged their paperwork data over 17 days, including information on paperwork activity, category type, whether the work was required or optional, whether it was completed…

Characteristics of the foreign language teacher, student, and classroom are compared with corresponding characteristics of the music teacher, student, and classroom to suggest parallels between the two disciplines. It is suggested that second language learning would be enhanced by adopting some techniques of music instruction, such as warming up…