Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examination in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this test on writing contains general instructions and three sections: (1) a personal response to literature, which requires a response about some aspect of literature; (2) functional writing, which requires a written response within a given situation…

Nine selected papers presented at the Texas Writing Research Group's 1981 conference are offered in this collection. The papers discuss (1) sources of linguistic interference among American minorities; (2) contributions of discourse analysis to composition; (3) emerging notions of heuristic (investigative), eristic (controversial), and protreptic…

The literature on essay testing, and particularly the selection of topics which will stimulate the writing of essays, was reviewed in order to recommend a set of specifications that will produce topics that are maximally fair to all teacher certificate candidates. It was found that by far the greater part of the research relating to writing…

The proceedings of the fourth annual Association of Writing Supervisors within the City University of New York (CUNY) are offered in this special newsletter issue. The papers from the proceedings are organized under the five thematic strands of the conference, which confronted the central issues of writing instruction at CUNY. The five strands are…

Four systems for scoring student essays were used to classify eleventh grade and undergraduate students according to writing ability. The reliabilities of the raters and the validities of the systems in classifying students were emphasized. Two analytic scoring systems--which assume that quality writing is characterized by the inclusion of certain…

In the present study, 49 fifth-graders enrolled the KIPP D.I.A.M.O.N.D. Academy in the 2002-03 school year were individually matched to control student from five feeder schools on the basis of ethnicity, free-reduced lunch status, and fourth-grade achievement on the Reading and Mathematics subtests of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment…

The Nevada Writing Assessment Program has been developed, implemented, and facilitated by Nevada classroom teachers, who have adapted, designed, and continually revised the scoring criteria; designed the assessment writing prompts; evaluated and chosen anchor papers; led the scoring sessions and read and scored the student papers; and made the…

This teacher guide is meant to provide a rationale for an assessment model for Spanish writing. A wide variety of bilingual and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs have emerged to meet this challenge, and writing is integral to these approaches because learning to write well in Spanish is often the key to academic success in English.…

This document includes the left-hand column ("What All Students Should Know") and the center column ("What All Students Should Be Able To Do") from "Missouri's Framework for Curriculum Development in Communication Arts K-12." Next to these two columns has been added a column which includes assessment noted for those…

Supplementary to "NAEP 1996 Trends in Academic Progress," this report describes two aspects of writing for which change has been measured since 1984: writing fluency as determined by holistic scoring; and mastery of the conventions of written English as determined by mechanics scoring. The introduction discusses the layout and means of…

Argues that developing writing activities, consulting with students as they work on a major writing project, and responding are important vehicles for teaching that fosters engaged learning. Central principles are to make assignments inquiry- or issue-based, to keep them focused but open enough for students to develop their own angle or interest,…

Peer response groups contribute to students' effectiveness as writers in any field, but cultural differences in communication affect interactions within the group. Culture-based dimensions on which communication may differ include individualism/collectivism, power distance, concept of "face," and communication style. Recommendations are…

Discusses the literacy levels of 46 workers from non-English-speaking backgrounds (NESB) who volunteered as subjects in a Queensland, Australia, research study. The instrument used was the Australian Second Language Proficiency Ratings. Results showed that actual literacy levels of the NESB employees were closer to employer requirements than…

Ten states participated in a cross-state scoring workshop in 1991, evaluating writing from elementary school, middle school, and high school students. Correlation of scores assigned by readers from one state with those from readers from another state were generally quite high. Implications for defining common standards are discussed. (SLD)

Study investigated the effectiveness of four instructional strategies on secondary students' argumentative writing, noting how different essay qualities influenced holistic scoring. Researchers found no significant differences in instructional strategy effectiveness or use of holistic scoring. Students' prior knowledge affected their ability to…