A study investigated the effects of teacher probes, a type of questioning, on children's written revisions. Subjects, 260 children from grades two through six in a midwestern school district of moderate size, were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (probe or comment). Subjects in both conditions were presented with a story starter that…

The Center for the Study of Evaluation's (CSE) expository and narrative rating scales have been developed to meet the need for instructionally relevant methods for assessing students' writing competence. Research indicates that large numbers of raters can be trained in the use of these scales and that, during training and independent rating, they…

The purpose of this paper is to compare the precision of direct and indirect measures of writing assessment using the test information functions from a graded response Item Response Theory (IRT) model. Subjects were 192 sophomore English students from a parochial high school in Wisconsin. Both direct and indirect measures of writing ability were…

In response to a nationwide concern for quality education and academic preparedness, the Ohio State Board of Education created in 1983 the Early English Composition Assessment Program (EECAP) for improving the writing competency of exiting high school students. Faculty from more than 15 two- and four-year institutions and many more high schools…

A three phase study evaluated the comparative effectiveness of various features that comprise a postsecondary writing program. The first phase of the study examined the college composition programs on the 19 California State University (CSU) campuses to identify and describe distinctive program features. The second and third phases measured both…

This study investigates the strength of relationships between direct measures (holistic scores for free writing samples) and indirect measures (the Test of Ability to Subordinate) of attained writing proficiency in English as a second language. Subjects were 67 undergraduate foreign language students enrolled in Basic Composition for Foreign…

A study examined the relationships between the quality of writing on composition examinations and topic selection, outlining, rough drafting, and revision. A sample of 1,372 grade twelve students' essays was examined. Among the issues examined were how topic selection affects the final essay score, if and how selection of topic affects the type or…

Intensive peer review is a method of teaching expository writing developed two years ago by A. N. Doane and now used extensively in freshman expository writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Students meet regularly in groups of four three times a week over the course of the term to share and critique each other's writing. The instructor…

The Registered Holistic Scoring Method, which has been used for one year to score the ninth grade writing test of the New Jersey High School Proficiency Test, is described. Registered Holistic Scoring was developed from the previous holistic approach in order to provide more reliable scoring guidelines year after year. Two trained evaluators…

During the 1984-85 school year, pupils in three age groups participated in an international survey to discover ways in which pupils are taught written composition, what they write, and how their achievements are assessed. The three age groups were: (1) those who had reached or were approaching the end of the class-teacher stage, (2) those who had…

This digest draws upon the thirteen published volumes of "Inside English" to offer a summary of practitioners' advice on techniques to improve two-year college students' writing skills. First, the paper summarizes underlying principles of writing instruction, indicating that: (1) usage, formal grammar, phonics, and spelling are best…

Reflecting the general concern about student writing performance, this book is designed to present recent advances in the theory and practice of assessing writing ability to all teachers of writing, as well as writing examiners and administrators. The book explores (1) reconsidering the links between teaching and assessing writing, (2) the…

Under the leadership of the Language Arts Curriculum Committee, the Greater Albany (Oregon) Public Schools conducted its second annual district assessment of writing skills of students in grades 5, 7, 9, and 11, using the "analytic trait scoring" method (ATS). The testing procedure, diagnostic in purpose, conformed to the writing process…

A computer assisted system called PEERRATE was used in a theater history course at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in Newark, in fall 1980, in order to give students an opportunity to anonymously grade one another's written work and to compare their own ratings with those of fellow students and the instructor. The PEERRATE system is a…

A study correlated the results of the Omnibus Personality Inventory (OPI) and two holistically scored narrative writing samples to determine how high school students' intellectual and emotional characteristics affected their writing improvement. Students in a small West Coast high school completed the OPI and generated a pretest writing sample in…