Early Holistic Scoring of Writing
Early Holistic Scoring of Writing

Author: Richard Haswell

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2019-11-01

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1607329123

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What is the most fair and efficient way to assess the writing performance of students? Although the question gained importance during the US educational accountability movement of the 1980s and 1990s, the issue had preoccupied international language experts and evaluators long before. One answer to the question, the assessment method known as holistic scoring, is central to understanding writing in academic settings. Early Holistic Scoring of Writing addresses the history of holistic essay assessment in the United Kingdom and the United States from the mid-1930s to the mid-1980s—and newly conceptualizes holistic scoring by philosophically and reflectively reinterpreting the genre’s origin, development, and significance. The book chronicles holistic scoring from its initial origin in the United Kingdom to the beginning of its heyday in the United States. Chapters cover little-known history, from the holistic scoring of school certificate examination essays written by Blitz evacuee children in Devon during WWII to teacher adaptations of holistic scoring in California schools during the 1970s. Chapters detail the complications, challenges, and successes of holistic scoring from British high-stakes admissions examinations to foundational pedagogical research by Bay Area Writing Project scholars. The book concludes with lessons learned, providing a guide for continued efforts to assess student writing through evidence models. Exploring the possibility of actionable history, Early Holistic Scoring of Writing reconceptualizes writing assessment. Here is a new history that retells the origins of our present body of knowledge in writing studies.

Grading Students' Classroom Writing: Issues and Strategies
Grading Students' Classroom Writing: Issues and Strategies

Author: Bruce W. Speck

Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Published: 2000-06-26

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13:

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This book offers detailed and complex guidance, and the necessary techniques, for grading college students' writing. It examines why it is important to integrate grading into the writing process; the need for effective writing assignments; ensuring fair professorial judgments; promoting student learning; helping students learn how to respond effectively to writing; and administrative support for effective grading. Sections of the book cover: the writing process and grading students' writing (fitting evaluation with the writing process, marrying writing and grading); constructing writing assignments (determining purpose and audience, critiquing writing assignment); fairness and professional judgment (grading methods); including students in the assessment of writing (professorial authorities, cheating, preparing students to make informed decisions about writing quality); and providing feedback for revision (reading and responding to students' writing, common misperceptions about feedback). A final section recommendations that faculty: (1) tailor the writing and grading process to particular classroom situations; (2) use writing to help students learn; (3) not grade all writing; (4) make wise use of time required for the writing and grading process; and (5) integrate literature on grading into their professional reading. An appendix offers an example of a student paper with effective written comments. (Contains approximately 200 references.) (CH).

Designing Writing Tasks for the Assessment of Writing
Designing Writing Tasks for the Assessment of Writing

Author: Leo Ruth

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

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This volume reports the results of a series of investigations of the properties of writing tasks, their authors' intentions, and the responses that these tasks evoked in student-writers and teacher-raters. The volume explains how both student-writers and teacher-raters, in their reading of the same topic/text, can arrive at different meanings. The investigations undertaken led the authors to make a number of recommendations about selecting subjects, specifying audience and mode, formulating instructions, and wording the topic. These recommendations are presented in non-technical language in a comprehensive set of Guidelines for Designing Topics for Writing Assessments.

Composing Research
Composing Research

Author: Cindy Johanek

Publisher:

Published: 2000-04

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13:

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Cindy Johanek offers a new perspective on the ideological conflict between qualitative and quantitative research approaches, and the theories of knowledge that inform them. With a paradigm that is sensitive to the context of one's research questions, she argues, scholars can develop less dichotomous forms that invoke the strengths of both research traditions. Context-oriented approaches can lift the narrative from beneath the numbers in an experimental study, for example, or bring the useful clarity of numbers to an ethnographic study. A pragmatic scholar, Johanek moves easily across the boundaries that divide the field, and argues for contextualist theory as a lens through which to view composition research. This approach brings with it a new focus, she writes. "This new focus will call us to attend to the contexts in which rhetorical issues and research issues converge, producing varied forms, many voices, and new knowledge, indeed reconstructing a discipline that will be simultaneously focused on its tasks, its knowledge-makers, and its students." Composing Research is a work full of personal voice and professional commitment and will be a welcome addition to the research methods classroom and to the composition researcher's own bookshelf. 2000 Outstanding Scholarship Award from the International Writing Centers Association.