Language
Assessment
Chap. 9 Assessing Writing
Genres of Writing






1. Academic writing
Papers and general reports/essays,
compositions/academically focused
journals/theses/dissertations
2. Job-related writing
Messages/letters,
emails/memos/reports/labels/signs/advertisements/a
nnouncements
3. Personal writing
Greeting cards/invitations/notes/tax
forms/diaries/fiction/personal journals
Types of Writing Performance


1. Imitative It is a level at which learners are
trying to master the mechanics of writing.
Form (letters, words, punctuation, and brief
sentences) is the primary while context and
meaning are of secondary concern.
2. Intensive It includes skills in producing
appropriate vocabulary, collocations, idioms,
and correct grammatical features. Most
assessment tasks are concerned with a focus
on form.
Continue


3. Responsive At this level, form-focused
attention is mostly at the discourse level, with
a strong emphasis on context and meaning.
Assessment tasks require learners to connect
sentences into a paragraph and create a
sequence of two or three paragraphs.
4. Extensive Extensive writing requires using
all the processes and strategies of writing to
write an essay, a term paper, a project report,
or even a thesis.
Imitative Writing






1. copying There is nothing innovative or
modern about directing a test-taker to copy
letters or words.
Example: (Copy the words)
bit
bet
but
gin din pin
___ ___
___ ___ ___ ___
Listening cloze selection tasks Test takers listen
a passage and then write the missing words
(p. 222)






3. Picture-cued tasks Familiar pictures are
displayed, and test-takers are told to write the
word that the picture presents.
4. Form completion tasks The use of a
simple form (registration, application, etc.)
that asks for name, address, phone number,
and other data.
5. Converting numbers and abbreviations to
words
9:00 _______ 5:45 ___________
Tues. _______ 5/3 ____________
726 S. Main St. _________________
Spelling Tasks & Detecting
Phoneme-Grapheme
Correspondences








Spelling tests
Picture-cued tasks
Multiple-choice techniques
Example:
He washed his hands with ______
A. soap B. sope C. sop D. soup
Matching phonetic symbols
d/e/ ____ l /ai/ /k/ ______
Intensive Writing



The same as controlled writing or guided
writing. At this level, students produce
language to display their competence in
grammar, vocabulary or sentence formation,
and not necessarily to convey meaning for an
authentic purpose.
Dictation and Dicto-Comp
Dictation is the rendition in writing of what
one hears aurally.


Dicto-comp: A paragraph is read at normal
speed, usually two or three times; then the
teacher asks students to rewrite the
paragraph from the best of their recollection.
Variation: The teacher, after reading the
passage, distributes a handout with key
words from the paragraph as cues for
students.
Grammatical Transformation
Tasks







The tasks are:
Change the tenses in a paragraph.
Change full forms of verbs to reduced forms.
Change statements to yes/no or whquestions.
Change questions into statements.
Combine two sentences into one using a
relative pronoun.
Change from active to passive voice.
Picture-Cued Tasks




Short sentences. A drawing of some simple
action is shown; the test-taker writes a brief
sentence. (p. 227)
Picture description. Using the prepositions: on ,
over, under, next to, around to describe as in a
picture on p. 192.
Picture sequence description. A sequence of
three to six pictures depicting a story line can
provide a suitable stimulus for written task.
(p.228)







Vocabulary Assessment Tasks
The major techniques used to assess
vocabulary are (a) defining and (b) using a
word in a sentence.
Ordering Tasks
Reordering words in a sentence
1. cold/winter/is/weather/the/in/the
2. Studying/what/you/are
3. next/clock/the/the/is/picture/to
Short-Answer & Sentence
Completion Tasks





Example:
1. A: Who’s that ? B: ___________ Gina.
A: Where’s she from? B: ____________ Italy.
2. Write three sentences describing your
preferences: #6a: a big, expensive car or a
small, cheap car; #6b: a house in the country
or an apartment in the city; #6c: money or
good health.
6a.________ 6b.______ 6c.__________
Issues in Assessing Responsive
and Extensive Writing



The genres of text here are:
Short reports/responses to the reading of an
article or story/summaries of articles or
stories/brief narratives or descriptions/
interpretations of graphs, tables, and charts.
Writers become involved in composing, real
writing, as opposed to display writing.
Continue



1. Authenticity. Assessment is typically
formative, not summative, and positive
washback is more important than practicality
and reliability.
2. Scoring. Not only the form abut also the
function of the text are important in evaluation.
3. Time. Responsive writing, along with
extensive writing, relies on the essential
drafting process for its ultimate success.
Designing: responsive &
Extensive Writing



Paraphrasing. It is to say something in one’s
own words. It can avoid plagiarizing and offer
some variety in expression. Scoring is judged
by how the test-taker conveys the same or
similar message, with discourse, grammar,
and vocabulary as secondary evaluations.
Guided Question and Answer
The test administrator poses a series of
questions which serve as an outline of the
emergent written text.
Guided Written Stimuli







1. Where did this story take place? (setting)
2. Who were the people in the story?
3. What happened first? And then? And then?
4. Why did _________ do _______ (reasons)?
5. What did ____ think about ____? (opinion)
6. What happened at the end? (climax)
7. What is the moral of the story? (evaluation)
Paragraph Construction Tasks




Assessment of paragraph development takes on the
following forms.
1. Topic sentence writing. The writing of a topic
sentence (its presence/absence, its effectiveness in
stating the topic).
2. Topic development within a paragraph. Four
criteria to assess the quality:
The clarity of expression of ideas/ the logic of the
sequence and connections/the cohesiveness or
unity/the overall effectiveness or impact
Continue






3. Development of main and supporting ideas
across paragraphs. The elements in evaluating a
multi-paragraph essay:
Addressing the topic, main idea, or principal
purpose.
Organizing and developing supporting ideas
Using appropriate details to undergird
supporting ideas.
Showing facility and fluency in the use of
language.
Demonstrating syntactic variety.
Strategic Options


1. Attending to task. A set of directives is stated
or implied by the teacher or the conventions of
the genre. Four types: compare/contrast,
problem/solution, pros/cons, and cause/effect.
2. Attending to genre. Reports, Summaries of
readings/lectures/videos, Responses to
readings/lectures/videos, Narration, description,
persuasion/argument, and exposition,
Interpreting statistical, graphic data, Library
research paper.
Test of Written English (TWE)


TWE is a standardized test of writing
ability and has gained a reputation as a
well-respected measure of written English.
The TWE is a timed impromptu test in
which test-takers are under a 30-minute
time limit and are not able to prepare
ahead of time.
Sample TWE Topic

Some people say that the best preparation
for life is learning to work with others and be
cooperative. Others take the opposite view
and say that learning to be competitive is the
best preparation. Discuss these positions,
using concrete examples of both. Tell which
one you agree with and explain why.
Six Steps to Maximize success
on the TWE









1. Carefully identify the topic.
2. Plan your supporting ideas.
3. In the introductory paragraph, restate the
topic and state the organizational plan.
4. Write effective supporting paragraphs.
5. Restate your position and summarize in
the concluding paragraph.
6. Edit sentence structure & rhetorical
expression. (Scoring Guide p. 239)
Scoring Methods for Responsive
and Extensive Writing




Three major approaches to scoring writing
performance: holistic, primary trait, and
analytical.
Holistic: A single score is assigned to an essay.
Primary trait: The achievement of the primary
purpose, or trait, of an essay is the only factor
rated.
Analytical: the written text is broken down into a
number of subcategories (organization,
grammar) and each subcategory gets a
separate rating.
Holistic Scoring





Advantages:
Fast evaluation/high inter-rater reliability/
easily interpreted by lay persons/emphasize
the writer’s strengths/applicability to writing
across many different disciplines
Disadvantages:
No diagnostic information/not equally well
apply to all genres/training in raters/one score
only
Primary trait Scoring



If the purpose or function of an essay is to
persuade the reader to do something, the
score for the writing would rise or fall on the
accomplishment of that function.
Organization, supporting details, fluency,
syntactic variety, and other features will also
be evaluated.
Advantage: focus on function.
Analytic Scoring



Classroom evaluation of learning is best served
through analytic scoring.
Brown and Bailey (1984) designed an analytic
scoring scale that specified five major categories
and five different levels in each category,
ranging from “unacceptable” to “excellent”.
Five categories: organization, logical
development of ideas, grammar,
punctuation/spelling/mechanics, and style and
quality of expression. (p.244-245)
Continue







Content
30
Organization
20
Vocabulary
20
Syntax
25
Mechanics
5
Total
100
Analytic scoring offers more washback and
helps to call the writer’s attention to problem
areas, but it requires more time for teachers to
attend to details within each of the categories.