Attitudinal data from questionnaires and student written products were used to investigate how students' attitudes relate to their performance on typical test writing tasks. (HOD)

Examines the questions: (1) What criteria do raters use when making holistic judgments of brief, impromptu essays? and (2) Do raters judge such essays in the same way they think they do? (FL)

Suggests slyly that, while word processors may have increased writing speed, they cannot ensure improved writing quality. (MM)

Discusses how writing instruction can help students move from the expressive writing typical of first drafts to writing that can be presented to discriminating audiences. (MM)

Describes a computer program developed to take the tedium out of writing comments on student essays. (AEA)

This study examines the relation between essay length and holistic scores assigned to Test of English as a Foreign Language[TM] (TOEFL[R]) essays by e-rater[R], the automated essay scoring system developed by ETS. Results show that an early version of the system, e-rater99, accounted for little variance in human reader scores beyond that which…

A study examined the assessment of instructional documents written by undergraduate engineering students in a 300-level technical writing course. The six documents were independently ranked by nine readers--three writing faculty, three engineering faculty, and three technical writing professionals. Besides ranking the documents, the nine readers…

Students should realize that writing is a process of discovery which transcends the English classroom. Writing only about literature limits their experiences. The types of writing assessed on the Georgia Middle Grades Writing Assessment (MGWA) are: Narrative Writing, Persuasive Writing, and Report Writing (Expository). This MGWA guide is divided…

As a result of increasing communication between the student staff of the Walk-In Service and new instructors enrolled in the course entitled Teaching Writing, Cornell University (New York) has instituted the Essay Response Consultation program. Freshman Writing Seminar instructors get free, private consultation about responding to student essays.…

Teaching modeling, sharing, tutoring, and working with children on their writing has been explored in England's recent National Literacy Strategy publications. These guidelines, produced in collaboration with Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), suggest ways of analyzing children's writing to obtain more diagnostic information about…

This preliminary study, focusing only on writing analysis, is part of a larger longitudinal study that will be used to develop an effective instrument to predict college retention. The methodology arose from a psychological model created by John Bean (2001) to ascertain "academic fit" in the college setting and a psycholinguistic model developed…

Designed to create and maintain an effective classroom writing workshop, this book explains how to teach young writers style and genre characteristics, composing skills, conventions, and the many aspects of the writing process itself. The second edition includes more information, models, and examples in the expository genre, as well as elaborating…

Proposition analysis was used to equate the text base of two essays with different readability levels. Easier reading essays were given higher scores than difficult reading essays. The results appear to identify another noncontent influence on essay test scores, leaving increasingly less variance for differences in content. (Author/PN)

This review, with profiles of 51 available writing/language usage tests from most major test publishing companies, provides technical information on the tests, the evolution of test characteristics, the tests' role as writing samples, and issues in psychometric quality. Published objective writing tests are changing in important and positive ways.…

Advocates exchanging sets of compositions with other faculty members to help teachers more actively participate in their classroom writing groups and to encourage students to weigh teacher feedback for themselves. (AEA)