ASSESSING WRITING

ASSESSING WRITING

1. Writing was primarily a convention to recording speech and for reinforcing grammatical and lexical features of languages.

2. GENRES OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE

   • 1. Academic Writing: essays, compositions, short-answer test responses. 2. Job-related Writing: messages, letters, memos, reports. 3. Personal Writing: invitations, notes, financial documents, questionnaires.

3. TYPES OF WRITING PERFORMANCE

   • 1. Imitative : this category includes the ability to speel correctly and to perceive phoneme-grapheme correspondences in the English spelling system. 2. Intensive (controlled): the fundamentals of imitative writing are skills in producing appropriate vocabulary within a context, collocation and idioms. 3. Responsive: tasks respond to pedagogical directives, lists of criteria, outlines, and other guidelines. 4. Extensive: implies successful management of all the process and strategies of writing for all purposes.

4. MICRO- AND MACROSKILLS OF WRITING

   • Microskills: Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms. Use cohesive devices in written discourse.
   • Macroskills: Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing.

5. DESINING ASSESSMENT TASKS: IMITATIVE WRITING

   • Tasks in [Hand] Writing Letters, Words, and Punctuation Copying: test-taker to copy letters or words. Listening cloze selection tasks: combine dictation with a written scripts that has a relatively frequent deletion ratio. Picture-cued tasks: familiar pictures are displayed, and test-takers are told write the word that the picture represents. Form completion tasks: a variation on pictures is the use of a simple form, that tasks for name, address, phone number, and other data. Converting numbers and abbreviations to words: numbers are written for example, hours of the day, dates, or schedules and test-takers are directed to write out the numbers.
   • Spelling Tasks and Detecting Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences Spelling test: teacher dictates a simple list of words, one word at a time, followed by the word in a sentence repeated again, with a pause for test-takers to write the word. Picture-cued tasks: pictures are displayed with the objective of focusing on familiar words whose spelling may be unpredictable. Multiple-choice technique: presenting words and phrases in the form of a multiple choice task risks crossing over into the domain of assessing reading. Matching phonetic symbols: this works best with letters that do not have one-to-one correspondence with the phonetic symbol.

6. DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: INTENSIVE (CONTROLLED) WRITING

   • Dictation and Dicto-Comp: dictation is simply the rendition in writing of what one hears aurally, so it could be classified as an imitative type of writing. Grammatical Transformation Tasks: language teachers have also use this technique as an assessment tasks, ostensibly to measure grammatical competence.
   • Picture-Cued Tasks: the main advantage in this technique is in detaching the almost ubiquitous reading and writing connection and offering instead a nonverbal means. Short sentences: a drawing of some simple action is shown; the test-taker writes a brief sentence. Picture description: test-takers are asked to describe the picture using four of the following prepositions: on, over, under, next to, around. Picture sequence description: the picture must be simple and unambiguous because an open-ended task at the selective level would give test-takers too many options.
   • Vocabulary Assessment Tasks: most vocabulary study is carried out though reading. Ordering Tasks: to those who are fond of word games and puzzles: ordering a scrambled set of words into a correct sentence. Short-Answer and Sentences Completion Tasks: such items range from very simple and predictable to somewhat more elaborate responses.