|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
- Editorial Board
Publication year: 2012
Source: Assessing Writing, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages CO2
[No author name available]
- Thank you to reviewers, 2011
Publication year: 2012
Source: Assessing Writing, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 78
[No author name available]
- Linguistic discrimination in writing assessment: How raters react to African American ?errors,? ESL errors, and standard English errors on a state-mandated writing exam
Publication year: 2011
Source: Assessing Writing, Available online 10 November 2011
David Johnson, Lewis VanBrackle
Raters of Georgia's (USA) state-mandated college-level writing exam, which is intended to ensure a minimal university-level writing competency, are trained to grade holistically when assessing these exams. A guiding principle in holistic grading is to not focus exclusively on any one aspect of writing but rather to give equal weight to style, vocabulary, mechanics, content, and development. This study details how raters react to ?errors? typical of African American English writers, of ESL writers, and of standard American English writers. Using a log-linear model to generate odds ratios for comparison of essays with these error types, results indicate linguistic discrimination against African American ?errors? and a leniency for ESL errors in writing assessment.
Highlights? Raters view kinds of writing errors differently. ? Raters of holistically-scored essays penalized African American English. ? Raters do not penalize ESL errors as severely as AAE errors.
- A close investigation into source use in integrated second language writing tasks
Publication year: 2011
Source: Assessing Writing, Available online 5 October 2011
Lia Plakans, Atta Gebril
An increasing number of writing programs and assessments are employing writing-from-sources tasks in which reading and writing are integrated. The integration of reading and writing in such contexts raises a number of questions with regard to writers? use of sources in their writing, the functions these sources serve, and how proficiency affects discourse synthesis. To answer these questions, the current study used a mixed-method approach with a group of undergraduate students in a Middle Eastern university. One hundred forty-five students worked on a reading-to-write task and completed a questionnaire. In addition, nine students participated in think-aloud writing sessions and follow-up interviews. The qualitative data yielded initial patterns, which were explored further by quantitative analysis of relevant questionnaire items using descriptive statistics and chi-square tests. Results showed that source use serves several functions including generating ideas about the topic and serving as a language repository. Score level affected text comprehension, especially at lower levels, but was not found to relate to the source use functions. Based on these results, a number of recommendations for writing instructors and language testers are provided.
Highlights? We conducted a mixed-methods study of source use in a reading?writing task. ? The data included questionnaires about processes, think aloud data, and interviews. ? We found differences across scores in comprehension but not in source text use. ? Writers used the source texts for discourse synthesis and for language support.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
| |
|
