From the early 1900s to the present, there have always been inconsistencies in how teachers evaluate the writing quality of their students' essays. Their critiques vary as much as their personalities. To establish common standards in writing for all courses in which essays are assigned and, at the same time, not infringe on the integrity of…

In response to widespread concern that many American students do not write well enough to meet the requirements of higher education and the workplace, the College Board's National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges has called for a writing revolution. A key component of this revolution is evaluation, with particular emphasis…

One ingredient that may serve as a catalyst for writing development is changes in writing knowledge. This study assessed the veracity of two tenets underlying this proposal: that skilled writers are more knowledgeable than less skilled writers, and that individual differences in knowledge are related to writing performance. Both of these…

This article presents two interview strategies used to assess college students' developmental growth toward self-authorship. We illustrate that self-authorship is a foundation for achieving many college learning outcomes and argue that designing practice to promote self-authorship requires understanding how to assess it. We offer a brief overview…

While much of L2 teacher feedback research has focused on the effectiveness of feedback and its impact on student revision and writing, little has been done to examine teachers' feedback in the larger classroom context of teaching and learning to ascertain the functions teacher feedback serves from an assessment-for-learning perspective. Using…

This article describes a pilot study that suggests writing-faculty workload may affect the pedagogical focus and rhetorical effectiveness of written response to students' essays. To study the relationship between writing-faculty workload and comments that faculty write on students' essays, the author sent an eleven-question survey to 30 English…

The Test of Written English (TWE), administered with certain designated examinations of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), consists of a single essay prompt to which examinees have 30 minutes to respond. Questions have been raised about the comparability of different TWE prompts. This study was designed to elicit essays for prompts…

Offering information to help parents understand how writing is taught in classrooms that use the 6-Trait Model for writing assessment and writing instruction, this handbook describes the model and how parents can provide the kind of support at home that would make classroom instruction even more effective. Sections of the handbook are: "A…

To better facilitate students' learning how to write with authority, instructors need to look more carefully at what it is they do when they teach composition courses. They must look critically at what they accept as "natural" or "true" about good writing practices. A training session for the graders of the Freshmen Placement…

A document prepared by the Commission on Composition in the early 1970s, "The Student's Right to Write," has some usefulness for contemporary practitioners of writing instruction. The report reflects the strong initiative arising in the '70s to rethink the beliefs and practices then prevalent in the field of English teaching. At the…

A study was conducted of 4 university instructors teaching a first-year composition class and of 16 of their students (4 for each instructor) randomly selected. Parts of the interviews, parts of the think-aloud protocols, and parts of the instructors' written comments are examined--the focus is on the way that students and teachers approach…

The Liberal Studies Assessment Portfolio program was instituted at San Diego State University in July 1992 in response to California's requirement that prospective elementary school teachers demonstrate subject matter competency. Since many liberal studies majors transfer to San Diego State University at the beginning of their junior year, most of…

This book has an easy-to-follow-format. It supports teachers through six workshops by sharing specific strategies, procedures, and materials that worked best for students and teachers in classroom writing workshops. The book discusses the routines that helped organize and support a workshop; and presents strategies for anecdotal record-keeping,…

This book presents specific grading strategies and explicit instructions for using them while offering options which allow teachers to place the grading of writing into a communication context. The book introduces and explains a wide range of evaluation strategies used by classroom teachers to arrive at grades. Samples of student writing accompany…

Seventy-four college students participated in a peer review assignment. Subjects were asked to write a draft of a three-page paper, distribute copies to three peer reviewers, revise their papers using the resulting feedback from each of the three peer reviewers, and then prepare and submit a final paper. Reviews were scored for the quality and…