Language Assessment

1. Assessing
Writing
Group 8
MEGA PURNAMA SARI
RONI JULISTIAN FAHLEFI
RIANA TRI DHAMAYANTI

2. Bibliography
Brown, H. Douglas, & Priyanvada Abeywickrama.
Language Assessment, Principle and Classroom
Practices. 2010. United States of America.
Brown, J. D., & Bailey, K. M. A categorical
instrument for scoring second language writing
skills. Language Learning. 1984.
Cohen, A. D. Assesing language ability in the
classroom (2nd ed.). 1994. Boston: Heinle and
Heinle.

3. TOPICS
• What to test
• How to test
• How to score
• Examples

4. What to test
1. Micro-skills.
2. Macro-skills.

5. Micro- and macroskills of writing
1. Microskills
a. produce graphemes and orthographic
patterns of English
b.Produce writing at an efficient rate of
speed to suit the purpose
c. Produce an acceptable core of words and
use appropriate word order patterns
What to test

6. d. Use acceptabble grammatical systems,
patterns, and rules
e. Express a particular meaning in different
grammatical forms
f. Use cohesive devices in written discourse

7. 2. Macroskills
a. Use the rhetorical formsand conventions of
written discourse
b. Appropriately accomplish the
communicative functions of written text
according to form and purpose
c. Convey links and connections between
events and communicate such relations as
mainidea, supporting idea, new
information, given information,
generalization, and exemplification

8. d. Distinguish between literal and implied
meanings when writing
e. Correctly convey culturally specific
references in the context of the written text
f. Develop and use a battery of writing
strategies, such as accurately assessing the
audience’s interpretation, using prewriting
devices, writing with fluency in the first
drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms,
soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and
using feedback for revising and editing.

9. How to test
1. Designing Assessment Task: Imitative writing.
2. Designing Assessment Tasks: Intensive
(controlled) writing.
3. Designing Assessment Tasks: Responsive And
Extensive Writing.

10. Designing Assessment Task: Imitative
writing
1. Tasks in [hand]-Writing Letters, Words and
Punctuation.
• Copying
• Listening cloze selection tasks
• Picture-cued tasks
• Form completion tasks
• Converting numbers and abbreviations to
words
How to test

11. 2. Spelling Tasks and detecting Phoneme-
Grapheme Correspondences
• spelling test
• Picture-cued tasks
• Multiple choice techniques
• Matching phonetic symbols

12. Designing Assessment Tasks: Intensive
(controlled) writing
1. Dictation and Dicto-Comp [L,W]
2. Pictured-Cued Tasks
varieties of picture cued controlled tasks:
– Short sentence
– Picture description
– Picture sequence description
3. Vocabulary Assessment Tasks
4. Short- Answer and Sentence-Completion Tasks

13. Designing Assessment Tasks: Responsive
And Extensive Writing
1. Paraphrasing
• Say something in one’s own words, avoid
plagiarizing.
• Informal and formative assessment
• Scoring of the test-taker’s response is a judgment
call
2. Guided Question and Answer
• For writing stimuli
• To prompt the test-taker to write from an outline.

14. 3. Paragraph Construction Task
Assessment of paragraph:
• Topic sentence writing
• Topic development within a paragraph
• Development of main and supporting ideas across
paragraphs
4. Strategic options
• Attending to task
• Attending to genre
5. Standardized test of responsive writing
• The example is the Test of Written English(TWE)

15. Scoring methods for responsive
and extensive writing?
1. Holistic scoring.
2. Primary trait scoring.
3. Analytic scoring.
How to score

16. Holistic scoring
Advantages :
1. Fast evaluation.
2. Relatively high inter-rater reliability.
3. The fact that scores represent “Standard” that
are easily interpreted by lay persons.
4. The fact that scores tend to emphasize the
writer’s strengths (Cohen, 1994, p.315)
5. Applicability to writing across many different
disciplines.

17. Disadvantages :
1. One score masks differences across the
subskills within each score.
2. No diagnostic information is available (No
washback potential).
3. The scale may not apply equally well to all
genres of writing.
4. Raters need to be extensively trained to use
the scale accurately.

18. Primary trait scoring
What would assess :
1. The accuracy of the account of the original
(summary).
2. The clarity of the steps of the procedure and
the final result (lab report).
3. The description of the main features of the
graph (graph description).
4. The expression of the writer’s opinion
(response to an article).

19. Analytic scoring
Analytic scoring may be more appropiately
called analytic assessment to capture its closer
assosiation with classroom language instruction
than with formal testing.
Brown and Bailey (1994) designed an
analytical scoring scale that specified five major
categories and a description of five different
levels in each category, ranging from
“unacceptable” to “excellent”.

20. Beyond Scoring: Responding to
Extensive Writing
1. Assesing Initial Stages of the Process of
Composing.
2. Assessing Later Stages of the Process of
Composing.

21. Assesing Initial Stages of the Process of
Composing
1. Focus your efforts primarily on meaning, main idea, and
organization.
2. Comment on the introductory paragraph.
3. Make general comments about the clarity of the main idea and
logic or appropriateness of the organization.
4. As a rule of thumb, ignore minor (local) grammatical and lexical
errors.
5. Indicate what appear to be major (global) errors (e.g., by
underlining the text in question) but allow the writer to make
corrections.
6. Do not rewrite questionable, ungrammatical, or awkward
sentences; rather, probe with a question about meaning.
7. Comment on features that appear to be irrelevant to the topic.

22. Assessing Later Stages of the Process
of Composing
1. Comment of the specific clarity and strength of all main ideas
and supporting ideas and on argument and logic.
2. Call attention to minor (“local”) grammatical and mechanical
(spelling, punctuation) errors but direct the writer to self-
correct.
3. Comment on any further word choices and expression that may
not be awkward but are not as clear or direct as they could be.
4. Point out any problems with cohesive devices within and across
paragraphs.
5. If appropriate, comment on documentation, citation of sources,
avidence, and other support.
6. Comment on the adequacy and strenght of the conclusion.

23. Examples

24. Sub-topics to be discussed
1. Genres of Written Language?
2. Types of written performance?
3. Micro- and macroskills of writing?
4. Designing assessment Task: Imitative writing?
5. Designing assessment Tasks: Intensive (controlled)
writing?
6. Issues In assessing Responsive And Extensive
Writing?
7. Designing assessment Tasks: Responsive And
Extensive Writing?
8. Scoring methods for responsive and extensive
writing?
9. Beyond Scoring: Responding to Extensive Writing

25. What are Genres of Written Language?
1. Academic writing
papers, essays compositions, journals, short
answer test responses, thesis.
2. Job-related writing
messages, letters or e-mails, memo,
advertisement, announcements.
3. Personal writing
letters, e-mails, greeting cards, invitation,
notes, shopping list, diaries, fiction.

26. What are types of written
performance?

27. There are four categories of written performance:
1. Imitative
• Learner masters the mechanics of writing
• Form is the primary focus.
2. Intensive(controlled)
• Learner determines the correctness and the
appropriateness of meaning and context.
3. Responsive
• Learner masters the fundamentals of sentence-level
grammar
• Focus on discourse conventions.
• Emphasize on context in meaning

28. 4. Extensive
• The management of all the processes and
strategies of writing for all purpose.
• Grammatical form is limited to
occasional editing.

29. What are Issues In Assessing
Responsive And Extensive Writing?
1. Authenticity
• Content validity
• Authentic real-word context
• Formative, not summative
• Washback is more important
2. Scoring
• There are many different scoring options
3. Time
• Relies on essential drafting process