Large Language Model (LLM) Functionalities, such as Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT), are a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that have the ability to produce human-like writing in response to a wide array of input. As this technology has become a staple of everyday life, many educators find themselves rapidly redefining best…

Language learners today have access to a much wider choice of resources and language-support tools that aid their writing processes. While research on the convenience and flexibility of the writing resources that learners use in real-life writing activities have argued for a re-conceptualization of writing ability, little is known about the effect…

In this teaching tip, we--a literacy professor and two K-12 teachers--encourage a rethinking of the baseline writing assessment by sharing our experiences with "The Paper Selfie," an activity that juxtaposes the arts and young people's personal writing. By centering students' identities, their hopes, beliefs, dreams, and realities,…

Despite the popularity of automated writing evaluation (AWE) that has provoked an increased scholarly interest, synthesized research to comprehensively understand its pedagogical effects is still in paucity. To fill the gap, this study aims to meta-analyse the overall effect of AWE on learners' writing skill development and whether the effect…

Students in higher education (HE) are required to complete a variety of writing tasks for coursework and examinations. However, for some students writing presents a major challenge. In the UK, the availability of tools for specialist assessors to help identify difficulties with the quality of written composition is limited. The aim of this study…

Evaluating written texts is believed to be a time-consuming process that can lack consistency and objectivity. Automated essay scoring (AES) can provide solutions to some of the limitations of human scoring. This research aimed to evaluate the performance of one AES system, Grammarly, in comparison to human raters. Both approaches' performances…

The Assessment of Written Expression Adaptivity for Assistive Technology (AWE ADAPT for AT) was developed to examine written expression participation in high school-age clients to aid the identification of assistive technology (AT) tools that can be recommended to optimize written expression. The tool is guided by the Occupational Adaptation (OA)…

Students with emotional and behavioral challenges often struggle with writing. Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is an assessment used for a variety of purposes including screening, progress monitoring, and data-based individualization. However, little research has examined technical properties of writing CBM data and supported inferences. This…

Cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) intends to identify learners' strengths and weaknesses in latent cognitive attributes to provide personalized remedial instructions. Previous CDA studies on English as a Foreign Language (EFL)/English as a Second Language (ESL) writing have adopted dichotomous cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) to analyze data…

Assessing the content of learners' compositions is a common practice in second language (L2) writing assessment. However, the construct definition of content in L2 writing assessment potentially underrepresents the target competence in content and language integrated learning (CLIL), which aims to foster not only L2 proficiency but also critical…

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of unfolding models for evaluating the quality of ratings obtained in rater-mediated assessments. Two different judgmental processes can be used to conceptualize ratings: impersonal judgments and personal preferences. Impersonal judgments are typically expected in rater-mediated assessments, and…

While many studies have addressed the benefits of technology-assisted L2 writing, limited research has delved into how generative artificial intelligence (GAI) supports students in completing their writing tasks in Mandarin Chinese. In this study, 26 university-level Mandarin Chinese foreign language students completed two writing tasks on two…

Although researchers have investigated technical adequacy and usability of written-expression curriculum-based measures (WE-CBM), the economic implications of different scoring approaches have largely been ignored. The absence of such knowledge can undermine the effective allocation of resources and lead to the adoption of suboptimal measures for…

In this Brief Report, we describe an evaluation of and revisions to a rubric adapted from the Jacobs et al.'s (1981) ESL COMPOSITION PROFILE, with four rubric categories and 20-point rating scales, in the context of an intensive English program writing placement test. Analysis of 4 years of rating data (2016-2021, including 434 essays) using…

Emergent writing--the process where young children begin to experiment with written language--is an important contributor to the development of literacy skills. One way for teachers to support the development of writing skills in preschool-aged children is by integrating the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) as a framework to foster…