Chapter # 4: Assessing Writing

Synopsis

By Licda. Guiselle Weelkly

Chapter4

" Assessing Writing " 

This field has been developed considerable  over the time. Students write on a variety of topics while teachers assessed them monitoring the clarity and organization of their message, this includes also the mechanics ( spelling,  capitalization, and punctuation).

It is important to remember that good writing skills are highly sought by hiher education institutions and employers.

Approaches to Writing Assessment

In literature they have discovered that there are two major approaches to writing assessment which are:

1. Indirect Measures of Writing Assessment  it assess correct usage in sentences-level constructions and assess spelling and punctuation via objective formats.  They determine student's knowledge of writing sub-skills such as grammar and sentence construction.

2. Direct Measures of Writing Assessment it assess a student's ability to communicate through the written mode based on the actual production of written texts, also it requires the student to produce the content by finding a way to organize his/her ideas, using appropiate vocabulary,  grammatical conventions and syntax.

Considerations in Designing Writing Assessment Tasks

 

It involves four basic elements

•  Rubric: the instructions
• Prompt: the task
• Expected response: what the teacher intends students to with the task.
• Post- task evaluation: assessing the effectiveness of the writing task.

 Issues in Writing Assessment

1. Time Allacation

2. Process versus product

3. Use of technology

4. Topic Restriction 

Techniques for Assessing Writing

The ESL/EFL literature generally addresses two types of writing-free writng and guided writing. Guided writing,  in contrast,  requires students to manipulate content that is provided in the prompt, usually in the form of a chart or diagram. When refering to this type of writing, the goal is to elicit comparable products from students of different ability levels.

 Different Types of Assessments Include

• Peer Assessment
• Portafolio- Based Assessment
• Marking Procedures for the assessment of writing
• Classroom teacher as Rater
• Multiple Raters
• Responding to Student Writing