Hi, Bill:
 
It's your word "mechanics" that prompts this response!
 
> In any case, all of this illustrates the main point of my comment--that
> teachers, process approach or not, are not using holistic scoring in their
> day-to-day grading of papers. Thus it does not seem reasonable to blame
> holistic scoring for any decline in students' ability to use mechanics.
. . .
 
But my comment is aimed at the earlier part of this discussion.
Note that the original Hamp-Lyons article alluded to here (and I do
hope to read it) dealt with ESL students.  As one who often works
with *very* basic writers, I am in a similar position:  My students'
problems with the written language cannot accurately be dealt with
if one conceptualizes them with a term like "mechanics" -- or
"proofreading" or "surface features," for that matter.
 
And while I agree that assessment and instruction should be
separately addressed, they are nevertheless intertwined.  Holistic
scoring is an old and familiar practice at CUNY schools; all
faculty members in English have been seasoned scorers of
the WAT (the CUNY Writing Assessment Test), socialized to score in
the same way, etc.  A subtle component of that socialization is an
understanding (not articulated, but it could/should be, it seems
to me) that all errors are not equal.  That is: some kinds of errors
will vanish in time.  E.g., the tangled syntax of ambitious sentences.
Some errors disappear with a little teaching and practice.  E.g., sentence
boundary errors and punctuation errors, for most students.  But other
errors foretell a long rocky road ahead:  Those that suggest interference
from spoken language that has not yet been reduced by sufficient
reading/writing practice, those that suggest dyslexia and other serious
problems with *reading*.
 
The WAT has been a fine instrument for placement as long as seasoned
teachers were reading it.  We tended to be relatively forgiving
of errors in the first two categories but to take those in the third
so seriously that students who committed them were placed into
basic writing courses -- where they could receive appropriate
instruction aimed at written language development -- even if the
ideas and organization of their WAT essays were relatively strong.
 
And we never did think the WAT worked well with ESL students,
even for placement.
 
(1) Is the kind of experienced reading I just described a violation of
holistic scoring principles?
 
(2) What are "mechanics," anyway?  :)
 
Carolyn Kirkpatrick
York College/CUNY
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