Introduction chapter I elements of assesing writing

CONTENT
Introduction………………3-4
CHAPTER I ELEMENTS OF ASSESING WRITING

1. 
   WHAT IS ASSESING WRITING……….5-8
   
2. 
   ASSESMENT TOOLS IN WRITING…….9-11
   
3. 
   IMPORTANCE OF ASSESING WRITING…..12-13
   

CHAPTER II ROLE OF ASSESING WRITING IN ACADEMICEDUCATION
2.1 RUBRICS: TOOLS FOR RESPONSE AND ASSESSMENT….14-20
2.2 METHOD AND ANALYSIS CRITERIA…….21-23
CONCLUSION……24
LIST OF USED LITERATURES…….24

INTRODUCTION

I am going to give lots of information and explain you what is assessing writing and why we use it in our academic writing. So this study informs about assessing writing illustrate its elements and any other iformations which you know or not. So I start general informations about this topic.
Assessment is the gathering of information about student learning. It can be used for formative purposes−−to adjust instruction−−or summative purposes: to render a judgment about the quality of student work. It is a key instructional activity, and teachers engage in it every day in a variety of informal and formal ways.
Assessment of student writing is a process. Assessment of student writing and performance in the class should occur at many different stages throughout the course and could come in many different forms. At various points in the assessment process, teachers usually take on different roles such as motivator, collaborator, critic, evaluator, etc., (see Brooke Horvath for more on these roles) and give different types of response.
One of the major purposes of writing assessment is to provide feedback to students. We know that feedback is crucial to writing development. The 2004 Harvard Study of Writing concluded, "Feedback emerged as the hero and the anti-hero of our study−powerful enough to convince students that they could or couldn't do the work in a given field, to push them toward or away from selecting their majors, and contributed, more than any other single factor, to students' sense of academic belonging or alienation"

The diagnostic uses of assessment (determining the reasons for writing problems and the student's instructional needs) are best met by looking at the process of writing, i.e., the steps students go through and strategies they use as they work at writing. How much planning does the student do before he or she writes? Does she have a strategy for organizing ideas? What seem to be the obstacles to getting thoughts down on paper? How does the student attempt to spell words she does not know? Does the student reread what she has written? Does the student talk about or share her work with others as she is writing it? What kind of changes does the student make to her first draft?
In order to make instructionally relevant observations, the observer must work from a conceptual model of what the writing process should be. Educators have reached little consensus regarding the number of steps in the writing process. Writing experts have proposed as few as two (Elbow, 1981) and as many as nine (Frank, 1979). Englert, Raphael, Anderson, Anthony, and Stevens (1991) provided a model of a five-step writing process using the acronym POWER: Plan, Organize, Write, Edit, and Revise. Each step has its own substeps and strategies that become more sophisticated as the students become more mature as writers, accommodating their style to specific text structures and purposes of writing. Assessment of the writing process can be done through observation of students as they go through the steps of writing.
Having students assess their own writing process is also important for two reasons. First, self-assessment allows students an opportunity to observe and reflect on their own approach, drawing attention to important steps that may be overlooked. Second, self-assessment following a conceptual model like POWER is a means of internalizing an explicit strategy, allowing opportunities for the student to mentally rehearse the strategy steps. Figure 1 is a format for both self-observation and teacher observation of the writing process following the POWER strategy. Similar self-assessments or observation checklists could be constructed for other conceptual models of the writing process.

CHAPTER I ELEMENTS OF ASSESING WRITING

A teacher's first responsibility is to provide opportunities for writing and encouragement for students who attempt to write. A teacher's second responsibility is to promote students' success in writing. The teacher does this by carefully monitoring students' writing to assess strengths and weaknesses, teaching specific skills and strategies in response to student needs, and giving careful feedback that will reinforce newly learned skills and correct recurring problems. These responsibilities reveal, upon inspection, that assessment is clearly an integral part of good instruction. In their review of the existing research on effective instruction Christenson, Ysseldyke, and Thurlow (1989) found that, in addition to other factors, the following conditions were positively correlated to pupil achievement:

• 
  The degree to which there is an appropriate instructional match between student characteristics and task characteristics (in other words, teachers must assess the student's prior knowledge and current level of skills in order to match them to a task that is relevant and appropriate to their aptitudes);
  
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  The degree to which the teacher actively monitors students' understanding and progress; and
  
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  The degree to which student performance is evaluated frequently and appropriately (congruent with what is taught).
  

Assessment, therefore, is an essential component of effective instruction. Airasian (1996) identified three types of classroom assessments. The first he called "sizing-up" assessments, usually done during the first week of school to provide the teacher with quick information about the students when beginning their instruction. The second type, instructional assessments, are used for the daily tasks of planning instruction, giving feedback, and monitoring student progress. The third type he referred to as official assessments, which are the periodic formal functions of assessment for grouping, grading, and reporting. In other words, teachers use assessment for identifying strengths and weaknesses, planning instruction to fit diagnosed needs, evaluating instructional activities, giving feedback, monitoring performance, and reporting progress. Simple curriculum-based methods for assessing written expression can meet all these purposes.
An effective writing process should lead to a successful product. A writing product fulfills its communicative intent if it is of appropriate length, is logical and coherent, and has a readable format. It is a pleasure to read if it is composed of well-constructed sentences and a rich variety of words that clearly convey the author's meaning. When various conceptual models of writing are compared side by side (Isaacson, 1984) five product variables seem to emerge: fluency, content, conventions, syntax, and vocabulary. Too often teachers focus their attention primarily on surface features of a student's composition related to the mechanical aspects of writing, or conventions. A balanced assessment should look at all five aspects of a student's writing. The following are simple methods for assessing each product variable. In some instances quantifiable measures are used; in others, qualitative assessments seem more appropriate.
The first writing skill a teacher might assess with a beginning writer is fluency: being able to translate one's thoughts into written words. As concepts of print and fine motor skills develop, the student should become more proficient at writing down words and sentences into compositions of gradually increasing length. The developmental route of very young writers involves trying to understand what written language is about as they look at books, become aware of environmental print, and put pencil to paper (Clay, 1982). Then children try to relate their experiences in writing using invented spelling. As they begin to construct little stories they explore spelling patterns and develop new language patterns. Clay (1979, 1993) recommends a simple rating scale for emerging writing skills that focuses on language level (from only letters to sentences and paragraphs), message quality, and directional principles (Figure 2).

1.1 WHAT IS ASSESING WRITING

Writing assesment refers to an area of study that contains theories and practices that guide the evaluation of a writer's performance or potential through a writing task. Writing assessment can be considered a combination of scholarship from composition studies and measurement theory within educational assessment Writing assessment can also refer to the technologies and practices used to evaluate student writing and learning.
Writing assessment began as a classroom practice during the first two decades of the 20th century, though high-stakes and standardized tests also emerged during this time. During the 1930s, College Board shifted from using direct writing assessment to indirect assessment because these tests were more cost-effective and were believed to be more reliable. Starting in the 1950s, more students from diverse backgrounds were attending colleges and universities, so administrators made use of standardized testing to decide where these students should be placed, what and how to teach them, and how to measure that they learned what they needed to learn. The large-scale statewide writing assessments that developed during this time combined direct writing assessment with multiple-choice items, a practice that remains dominant today across U.S. large scale testing programs, such as the SAT and GRE These assessments usually take place outside of the classroom, at the state and national level. However, as more and more students were placed into courses based on their standardized testing scores, writing teachers began to notice a conflict between what students were being tested on—grammar, usage, and vocabulary—and what the teachers were actually teaching—writing process and revision. Because of this divide, educators began pushing for writing assessments that were designed and implemented at the local, programmatic and classroom levels. As writing teachers began designing local assessments, the methods of assessment began to diversify, resulting in timed essay tests, locally designed rubrics, and portfolios. In addition to the classroom and programmatic levels, writing assessment is also hugely influential on writing centers for writing center assessment and similar academic support centers.
Because writing assessment is used in multiple contexts, the history of writing assessment can be traced through examining specific concepts and situations that prompt major shifts in theories and practices. Writing assessment scholars do not always agree about the origin of writing assessment.
The history of writing assessment has been described as consisting of three major shifts in methods used in assessing writing. The first wave of writing assessment (1950-1970) sought objective tests with indirect measures of assessment. The second wave (1970-1986) focused on holistically scored tests where the students' actual writing began to be assessed. And the third wave (since 1986) shifted toward assessing a collection of student work (i.e. portfolio assessment) and programmatic assessment.
The 1961 publication of Factors in Judgments of Writing Ability in 1961 by Diederich, French, and Carlton has also been characterized as marking the birth of modern writing assessment. Diederich et al. based much of their book on research conducted through the Educational Testing Service (ETS) for the previous decade. This book is an attempt to standardize the assessment of writing and is responsible for establishing a base of research in writing assessment.
The concepts of validity and reliability have been offered as a kind of heuristic for understanding shifts in priorities in writing assessment as well interpreting what is understood as best practices in writing assessment.
In the first wave of writing assessment, the emphasis is on reliability reliability confronts questions over the consistency of a test. In this wave, the central concern was to assess writing with the best predictability with the least amount of cost and work.
1.2 ASSESMENT TOOLS IN WRITING
Assessment tools aid in assessing and evaluating student learning and can provide different options to assess students beyond the traditional exam. Several tools are available including grading rubrics, Canvas Assignments, plagiarism detection, self-assessment, and peer assessment, surveys, and classroom polling.
Assessment tools can be used to help support active learning, facilitate team-building activities, and foster peer-to-peer learning. They also provide alternative assessment methods and can be used to check in on student learning in real time. 
Because these tools are all online, there can be a number of technical considerations to take into account. Although most are easy to use, extra time to learn how to use and navigate them can be required. Instructors will also want to thoughtfully design assessments around the capabilities of the tools.
What are Collaboration Tools? 
Collaboration tools allow students, instructors, and teaching assistants to exchange resources in a number of different ways, depending on what is needed for a particular task. Tools include document and resource sharing and collaboration, as well as web conferencing.
Why Use Collaboration Tools? 
Collaborative assignments and tasks can be created for both in and outside class. They can be used to help develop active learning assignments, facilitate team-building activities, and help students engage with the content through group activities and peer-to-peer learning. 
Considerations for Using Collaboration Tools 
Because these tools are all online, there can be a number of technical considerations to take into account. Although most are easy to use, extra time to learn how to use and navigate them will be required. Instructors will also want to thoughtfully design activities around the capabilities of the tools.
What are Survey Tools? 
Survey tools are online tools that can be used to electronically collect answers or responses to questions from a target audience. They feature a variety of question types, including multiple-choice, ranking, open-ended, and many others. Cornell supports the Qualtrics survey tool and Canvas has a survey feature that is available within the course. 
Why Use Survey Tools? 
Find out relevant background information such as background knowledge, prevalence of commonly held misconceptions, current opinions of course topics, and reasons for taking a course. Check student learning without doing a graded assessment with informal classroom assessment techniques. Measure the effectiveness of a particular teaching strategy by conducting pre/post surveys that allow you to assess and document both actual learning that takes place and attitude changes over time.
Lastly, collect mid-semester course evaluations by asking one or two questions about how your course is going. This gives you the opportunity to deal with any issues before the course ends, give insight into student learning and classroom climate, as well as demonstrates a willingness to listen to feedback/engage with students to improve the class. 
Considerations for Using Survey Tools 

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  When creating an online survey for your students, keep the survey as simple and concise as possible, and design effective questions. 
  
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  Check the survey by completing it yourself prior to giving it to students. 
  
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  Before conducting the survey, explain why you are collecting the data and share whether or not the survey is anonymous. Express how much you appreciate student feedback and explain how valuable it is to you as you refine your course. 
  
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  If you are requesting open-ended feedback, for example, guide students on how to provide effective feedback by articulating the characteristics of effective and ineffective comments. 
  
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  Provide an incentive for students to complete the survey, such as by offering a credit point, or give them class time to complete it if you know each student has access to the internet on a personal device. 
  
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  If appropriate, ask students to predict what you might discover. 
  
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  Share your results with students and explain what the results mean and how they might influence your course. 
  

Surveys in Canvas can be graded or ungraded, and can be anonymous as well. With anonymous surveys, often used to gather student opinions, results do not include any identifying information about the respondents. 
Digitally evaluating written work
There are a number of tools that facilitate and streamline the process of collecting, evaluating, and returning student writing, including Canvas and Turnitin. Remember, though, that you will still need to determine appropriate learning objectives for your student population, design meaningful assignments, and establish fair yet challenging performance criteria. Below we list several goals that align with using these tools.

While there are many ways to offer useful feedback to your students, research shows that in order for assessment to be effective, and to help students develop the skill of self-evaluation, the criteria for success must be: fair, consistent, public, clear, and responsible. It will be helpful to take the following concerns into account, whatever feedback methods you choose.
Higher order concerns are typically conceptual and structural. Do the ideas in the paper make sense? Are claims supported with evidence? Do the paragraphs follow a logical order? Lower order concerns have less to do with meaning than with “correctness,” i.e., grammar, style, and formatting.

3. 
   IMPORTANCE OF ASSESING WRITING
   

Writing assessment can be used for a variety of purposes, both inside the classroom and outside: supporting student learning, assigning a grade, placing students in appropriate courses, allowing them to exit a course or sequence of courses, certifying proficiency, and evaluating programs. Given the high-stakes nature of many of these assessment purposes, it is crucial that assessment practices be guided by sound principles that are fair and just and specific to the people for whom and the context and purposes for which they are designed. This position statement aims to provide that guidance for writing teachers and administrators across institutional types and missions. 
We encourage faculty, administrators, students, community members, and other stakeholders to reflect on the ways the principles, considerations, and practices articulated in this document are present in their current assessment methods and to consider revising and rethinking their practices to ensure that inclusion and language diversity, teaching and learning, and ethical labor practices inform every level of writing assessment.
This position statement identifies six principles that form the ethical foundation of writing assessment.
Writing assessments are important means for guiding teaching and learning. Writing assessments—and assignments to which they correlate—should be designed and implemented in pursuit of clearly articulated learning goals.
The methods and criteria used to assess writing shape student perceptions of writing and of themselves as writers.
Assessment practices should be solidly grounded in the latest research on learning, literacies, language, writing, equitable pedagogy, and ethical assessment. 
Writing is by definition social. In turn, assessing writing is social. Teaching writing and learning to write entail exploring a range of purposes, audiences, social and cultural contexts and positions, and mediums. 
Writers approach their writing with different attitudes, experiences, and language practices. Writers deserve the opportunity to think through and respond to numerous rhetorical situations that allow them to incorporate their knowledges, to explore the perspectives of others, and to set goals for their writing and their ongoing development as writers. 
Writing and writing assessment are labor-intensive practices. Labor conditions and outcomes must be designed and implemented in pursuit of both the short-term and long-term health and welfare of all participants.
Ethical assessment at all levels and in all settings is context specific and labor intensive. Participants working toward an ethical culture of assessment must critically consider the conditions of labor, as well as expectations for class size, participation in programmatic assessment (especially for contingent faculty members), and professional development related to assessment. In addition, these activities and expectations should inform all discussions of workload for assessment participants to ensure that the labor of assessment is appropriately recognized and, where appropriate, compensated. 
Ethical assessment does not only consider the immediate practice of faculty engaging in classroom, programmatic, or institutional assessment, but it also builds on the assessment practices students have experienced in the past. Ethical assessment considers how it will coincide with other assessment practices students encounter at our institutions and keeps in sight the assessment experiences students are likely to experience in the future. A deliberately designed culture of assessment aligns classroom learning goals with larger programmatic and institutional learning goals and aligns assessment practices accordingly. It involves teachers, administrators, students, and community stakeholders designing assessments grounded in classroom and program contexts, and it includes feeding assessment data back to those involved so that assessment results may be used to make changes in practice. Ethical assessment also protects the data and identities of participants. Finally, ethical assessment practices involve asking difficult questions about the values and missions of an assignment, a course, or a program and whether or not assessments promote or possibly inhibit equity among participants.
AfL methodology is proven to give students more control over their learning, helping boost motivation and ultimately improve their exam performance. It helps learners to see what they are aiming for and understand what they need to do to achieve those aims.
The benefit for you, the teacher, is that you gain insights into your students’ level of understanding of a particular concept or topic. This helps you to support individual students to progress.
Effective feedback in assessment for learning is vital. John Hattie’s research shows that feedback is one of the most impactful factors on student achievement, with an average effect size of 0.79 – twice the average effect of all other schooling effects (as discussed in Visible Learning, 2011).
To have a positive effect, feedback must be task-focused, timely, specific, clear and unbiased. We all know praise is motivational, but the most effective feedback concerns useable information about how students are doing and how they can improve to reach their goal. Or, as Daisy Christodoulou sees it – taking a reading and adjusting to get students to where they need to be.

Now you know the benefits of assessment for learning and what it means, you can implement it in your teaching strategy for some positive results and improvement. However, if you are still struggling with the content of AfL, take a look at our Teacher Development resources – we have a professional development course, just for you!

CHAPTER II ROLE OF ASSESING WRITING IN ACADEMICEDUCATION

In order to fulfill the communicative function of writing, the product must be readable. Writers are expected to follow the standard conventions of written English: correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar and legible handwriting. Consequently, even if the message is communicated, readers tend to be negatively predisposed to compositions that are not presentable in their form or appearance. Teachers traditionally have been more strongly influenced by length of paper, spelling, word usage, and appearance than by appropriateness of content or organization (Charney, 1984; Moran, 1982).
Counting correct word sequences is one quantitative method of measuring and monitoring students' use of conventions. Correct word sequences (CWS) are two adjacent, correctly spelled words that are grammatically acceptable within the context of the phrase (Videen, Deno, & Marston, 1982). Capitalization and punctuation also can be considered within the sequence. To calculate the proportion of CWS:

1. 
   Place a caret (^) over every correct sequence between the two words that form the sequence.
   
2. 
   Place a large dot between every incorrect sequence. Place dots before and after misspelled words.
   Example: o my ^ dog o chasd o the ^ ball^.
   
3. 
   The first sequence is not comprised of two words but marks how the sentence was begun. (Sentence beginning to first word my is marked as an incorrect sequence because the M is not capitalized.) The last sequence is the last word to period, question mark, or other appropriate ending punctuation.
   
4. 
   To control for length of composition either (a) time the writing sample for 3 minutes (the student may continue writing after a mark is made indicating the last word written in the 3-minute period) and/or (b) divide the number of CWS by the total number of sequences (correct and incorrect), which gives the proportion of CWS.
   

Proportion of correct word sequences, however, does not in itself pinpoint specific concerns about the student's spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, or handwriting. The diagnostic function of assessment will only be met if the teacher also notes the student's strengths and weaknesses as in Figure 5.
2.1 RUBRICS: TOOLS FOR RESPONSE AND ASSESSMENT