One way to help teachers know how to give better assistance to students is to have students analyze their papers in a letter or memo attached to their essays. In one class, such memos are called "Learning from your own writing process," and typically describe: (1) what the student was trying to do; (2) what seemed to work or not work in…

This booklet provides Alberta (Canada) grade 9 teachers, administrators, and students with samples of the full range of students' writing that exemplify the criteria used to score students' written responses on the June 1990 Grade 9 English Language Arts Achievement Test. Commentary accompanying the students' writing samples in the booklet…

A study investigated whether some level of writing apprehension or some expressed attitude toward writing might result in better essay scores. Subjects, 255 freshmen composition students at two campuses of the California State University system, were administered instruments designed to comparatively measure the quality of students' writing, gauge…

The purpose of this booklet is to provide administrators, teachers, and students in Alberta, Canada, with samples of students' writing that exemplify the criteria used to score students' written responses on the June 1991 Grade 9 Social Studies Achievement Test. The Grade 9 Social Studies Achievement Test consisted of two parts: Part A: Multiple…

An ethnographic study investigated conversations during planning meetings and placement rating sessions for selecting and rating freshman composition placement exams. Planning meetings involved the administrative coordinator and two assistants selecting model essays, discussing the rubric, and confirming the final plans for the rating session.…

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 June 1998 administration of the English 33 Diploma Examination. The information in the report is most helpful when used in conjunction with the detailed school and jurisdiction…

This guide presents a list of writing skills that all students should know and be able to do at each grade level from kindergarten through sixth grade, as determined by the Idaho State Board of Education. It presents, grade by grade, a list of target skills and sample assessment methods. The guide also includes columns identifying three processes…

Timed writing exercises used at the University of the Ryukyus (Japan) to help alleviate common problems in English second language writing are described. It is proposed that Japanese students have difficulty writing in English because of early training in the grammar-translation method, a lack of communication skills, the overuse of bilingual…

A study investigated a holistic approach to the assessment of students' writing skills in a high school that is part of a residential treatment program for adolescents. High school students were asked to produce spontaneous writing samples in the fall and spring of the 1990-91 school year. The students were asked to write about someone they…

During the summer of 1990, a university English education professor in Indiana responded to the writing of 20 fourth through seventh graders via a computer installed in his home. The students wrote daily anything ranging from a 3-line haiku to 10-20 computer-screen stories. The classroom teacher took the students through the steps in the writing…

A roundtable session at the 1992 Conference on College Composition and Communication explored the effects of portfolio evaluation on composition students, English faculty, and departmental administrators at two- and four-year campuses of the University of Alaska Southeast. Faculty from both four-year and two-year campuses found that portfolio…

To address the need for writing assessment tools, two analytic measures for evaluating managerial writing were used: the Analysis of Argument Measure based on Toulmin's (1958) elements of an argument, and the Persuasive Adaptiveness Measure, which draws on the Delia, Kline, and Burleson (1979) ranking system for scoring the degree of social…

A study examined the influence of two different writing tasks on the ways in which students evaluate arguments on one controversial issue. Subjects, 20 first-year college students, evaluated 2 argumentative articles on the issue of drug legalization. Subjects rated the strength of the argument of each paragraph as they read. Ten of the subjects…

The principal goals of the State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport's large-scale writing assessment are to determine if a writing program actually helps students to write better and, if so, whether that growth can be measured during the college years. Portfolio assessment has become an attractive alternative to single-test essay at SUNY…

Recognizing that increasing pressure for greater accountability has accompanied recent economic changes, this book presents 11 articles on literacy evaluation and assessment. They are: (1) "Evaluation: A Political Issue" (Wendy Crebbin); (2) "Understanding Evaluation" (Kaye Lowe and Bill Bintz); (3) "A Difficult Balance:…