This study explores the perceptions of different groups of L1 and L2 Israeli pre-service teachers and their instructors regarding "good" academic writing. The study further investigates whether those perceptions accurately reflect their knowledge of academic writing. Eighty-one participants graded three different essays written by immigrant…

Portfolios have attracted considerable interest among ESL writing and assessment specialists since the 1980s. Whether they have fulfilled the promise their proponents envision is a question still under investigation. This paper describes two case studies which looked at student experiences with portfolios in two ESL writing courses where the…

The authors report on an exploratory study that investigated Grade 10 students' responses to a large-scale, high-stakes literacy test, the results of which determine high school graduation in Ontario, Canada. Through focus-group and individual interviews, the authors found that students perceived the test as evaluating their English skills rather…

The availability of multi-media technologies in education has made the option of independent learning increasingly attractive. Whilst independent learning presents learners with a more flexible learning context, it also presents new challenges in assessment in that the onus is placed upon the learners themselves to monitor and evaluate their own…

This study aimed to comprehensively investigate the impact of a word-processor on an ESL writing assessment, covering comparison of inter-rater reliability, the quality of written products, the writing process across different testing occasions using different writing media, and students' perception of a computer-delivered test. Writing samples of…

A pilot study was conducted to evaluate and improve the rating procedure proposed for use in a research effort designed to assess the essay writing ability of college sophomores. Generalizability theory and the Many-Facet Rasch Model were each used to (a) estimate potential sources of error in the rating, (b) to obtain reliability estimates, and…

Accuracy in the scoring of writing is critical if standardized tasks are to be used in a national assessment scheme. Three approaches to establishing accuracy (i.e., consensus, consistency, and measurement) exist and commonly large-scale assessment programs of primary school writing demonstrate adjacent agreement consensus rates of between 80% and…

Washington State University (WSU), has developed two large-scale assessment programs to evaluate student learning outcomes. The largest, the Writing Assessment Program, diagnoses student writing abilities at entry and mid-career to determine the type of support needed to navigate the expectations of our writing-rich curriculum. The second, the…

This article attempts to structure student assessment practices in the classroom. Informed by fourth generation evaluation, it discusses a pedagogy based on a recursive framework of writing, assessment, and reflection activities that move students toward productive praxis. Implemented over three semesters at a land grant university in the U.S.,…

Among the many possible aspects to assessing writing, one of the most problematic is coherence. The problems with marking coherence arise because it is by nature subjective. However, the reasonable probability of several readers reaching a consensus concerning the coherence of a text suggests that it may be possible to assign relatively reliable…

Specialists in the field of large-scale, high-stakes writing assessment have, over the last forty years alternately discussed the issue of maximizing either reliability or validity in test design. Factors complicating the debate--such as Messick's (1989) expanded definition of validity, and the ethical implications of testing--are explored. An…

This paper reports on a test that is being used to fulfill a university writing examination requirement for non-native speakers of English. The test, which requires students to read two passages, write short-answer comprehension and synthesis questions, and write an argument essay on a topic related to the passages, replaces a test that was based…

This study examined the possible gender differences in teachers' scoring and written feedback on two narrative and two persuasive writing samples sent to 108 grade six teachers throughout one Canadian province. Participating teachers read a narrative and a persuasive piece of writing from one boy, and a narrative and persuasive piece written by…

Attempts to put the field of writing assessment into a historical, linguistic, and geographical/cultural context, in order to stimulate work in writing assessment from across as broad a set of perspectives as possible. Presents a history of writing assessment, looks at writing assessment in the modern period, and considers the future of writing…

Considers what the best assessment practices are for ESL (English as a Second Language) and international students at two- and four-year institutions in the United States. Presents results of an Internet search of one set of prominent American institutions' placement practices. Argues that second language composition specialists need to examine…