I think one of the problems we need to address here is the issue of the
end result of student writing. Obviously, not every student is destined
to become a “writer” (whatever that may be), and our job, at least at
the high school and probably the college level is have students perform
to certain standards. We’ve elected to call these standards “formal
writing.” We call this “formal” because is follows a FORM., Please
don’t misunderstand me, I certainly advocate self-expression, respect
for dialects, and inculcating personal meaning in student writing. But,
the fact is, that in order to succeed academically, what students need
to be able to do is “measure up” to whatever the local state standards
happen to be.
Much like building a house, though, writing needs to have a
foundation. It’s somewhat of a truism that “you have to know the rules
in order to break them,” and I think this is true of student writing.
So, is it so terrible to teach students to outline their writing with a
“controlling idea” or “articulated thesis statement”? Craig says that
our students have been “too rigidly prepared for this.” And “you have
to shake them loose from this.” My question is: how do we prepare
students for more advanced writing? Again, it seems as though you need
to master the basics before you can add layers of sophistication to
these basics. Again, if you are learning to build a house, you build a
foundation, lay down a sill plate and build a reasonably square house
with four walls and a roof. Once you’ve done that, you may experiment
with adding gables, extensions and whatnot, but, the basic frame
remains the same. I deal daily with students who have problems with
basic sentence construction. How am I to teach them to build the
Parthenon?
-----Original Message-----
From: Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Mon, 9 May 2005 13:57:37 -0400
Subject: Re: Writing and assessment
The NCTE task force on SAT and ACT Writing tests has just released
its report, which has direct bearing on our discussion. My copy was
forwarded, but I believe you can access it directly on the NCTE.ORG
site.
I'm sure much would get lost in summary, but they are in general
critical of the test. In part, they don't feel it adds much of anything
to the predictive value of the SAT's. They worry about it being used
for purposes it is not well suited for, like placement or diagnostics.
They do agree that it is likey to foster more interest in writing
instruction at the high school level, but worry that instruction will
be entirely focused on preparation for the test at the expense of more
substantial instruction (practice) in writing.
There are inherent weaknesses in a test like this if it is designed to
measure writing capability or ability. One is that the subjects have to
be of general reference, and the student is thus encouraged to write
without substantial knowledge of the topic or access to research
sources.It's also hard to design in any kind of meaningful rhetorical
context. Form begins to take primacy over substance. Another objection
is that it's pretty much a one shot writing assignment, not at all the
drafting and revising that goes on in virtually all substantial
writing. ESL students are particularly harmed by functioning under this
kind of time pressure, without access to dictionaries and without a
chance to put in extra time. Traditionally, these tests underpredict
the success rate for nontraditional populations.
A fairly general consensus in the field is that writing is best
measured in portfiolio, which can include a wide range of assignments
and can take a much fuller measure of a student's approaches to
writing, including strategies for revising. Another consensus seems to
be that assessment is best practiced locally, in relation to a
particular placement decision or particular context or situation. (I
work with EOP students at a major university, and my job is to get them
ready to function well within the mainstream. A remedial student in
that context might be an honor student somewhere else. Students
transferring in with good grades from community college writing classes
often find themselves way over their heads, but that doesn't mean their
composition grades were wrong. And so on.)
I too have worked with holistically assessed writing samples, some of
them in timed, cued sessions, and I find them very useful, but highly
limited in what they can validly say. Most people who work with these
tests incorporate training and monitoring procedures to make them
RELIABLE (a reasonable expectation the same student would receive the
same score on a second test) and would agree that they are of limited
VALIDITY (as a predictor of how well a student might do in college or
as a full measure of competence in writing.) Since writing is
performance, it's easy to have an off day and be unfairly judged for it.
I remember teaching for the SAGE system in a local prison and being
forced to give a timed post-test essay with a question somewhat like
the following: "School bus drivers have been running amok in your town,
paying no attention to the speed limits as they careen past your
corner. Write a letter to the school board asking them to address this
problem..."
The problem was that I was administering this writing cue to people
who had never ridden a school bus and probably didn't know what a
school board is all about or how they might be appropriately addressed.
(Compare it to, say, asking about how prisoners might approach the
warden about a particularly brutal C.O.) When I raised these issues
with someone on campus, I was told that it didn't matter because they
only look at errors. This is, of course, nonsense of the highest order,
but doesn't in and of itself condemn this kind of testing. In general,
form does seem to take precedence over substance, and the tendency is
to find mechanical responses acceptable and to be somewhat unsure of
how to deal with any real risk taking on the part of the student. But
you can train people to adjust to that.
In New York we have a regents writing exam, and many of our students
have been too rigidly prepared for this. The five paragraph theme is
one popular way. It helps them through the test, but you have to shake
them loose from it when they get to college, which is an easier
adjustment for some students than it is for others. It's hard not to
believe it sometimes does more harm than good.
Those of us who will be part of the working group this summer might
look at the NCTE's task force report as a potential model. The intense
focus on ERROR avoidance/correction and not on KNOWLEDGE when testing
grammar is a parallel in the way it demeans the whole subject of
grammar. We should say so just as clearly and forcefully. That also
means advocating a different kind of curriculum and a different kind of
accountability. It might help to get the writing people in as potential
allies, though that probably means adjusting/deepening their own
current understanding of grammar.
All this means, and I think Martha is very much right, taking on the
NCTE policy that teaching grammar is harmful. Because that position has
been Politically Correct for some time, it has been hard to have a
reasonable discussion on the issue. We need to present a clear and
cogent point of view as an alternative. We need to have an alternative
position on record.
Craig
.
Veit, Richard wrote:
I will second what Karl says. About ten years ago I was, for several
years, a grader for the ECT (English Composition Test) and was
impressed by the training and monitoring of readers and the efforts to
get consistent scoring. I'd say the the essay tests are no less (or
more) reliable a measure of general writing ability than the other SATs
are at measuring verbal and quantitative ablities.
Dick Veit
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Karl
Hagen
Sent: Sun 5/8/2005 1:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Writing and assessment
I have a fair bit of experience with this sort of essay grading. It's
widely used in state and national assessments, as well as in colleges
and universities for their internal placement tests into composition
courses.
Personally, I prefer authentic assessment and dislike standardized
testing on principle. But within the framework of a standardized test
(something we are stuck with for many reasons), you are more or less
forced into something very similar to this sort of essay task, and the
grading practices are defensible if the results are used appropriately.
That is a big if, however, as these results are often used
inappropriately. This essay measures students' ability to write a brief,
impromptu essay on an incredibly general topic. In terms of
authenticity, the task is lacking in obvious ways. This writing task is
far removed from the revised composition, and not even much like writing
an exam essay (where at least one has a narrowly defined subject). So if
we use scores from these essays as a competency test (say, to exempt
students from a freshman comp class), I would argue that they are
misused.
However if the purpose is to get a relative ranking of students'
abilities, these tests do work. There is research to back up the
assertion that students' relative performance remains consistent if you
change the nature of the essay (for example, by altering the time
constraints), and that there's a positive correlation between these
essays and freshman comp grades.
This, by the way, is a big problem with the uses to which standardized
tests are put generally. There is a large difference in the way you
construct an assessment test like the SAT or GRE (designed to
distinguish student performance across the full range of ability levels)
and a competency test like the NCLEX or a state bar exam (designed to
establish a minimum performance standard). To try to use the results of
a test for a purpose it was not designed for guarantees unfairness.
Since I have trained graders myself for several years, I can definitely
state that graders are not trained to look for any formulaic wording for
transitions. Or at least that's not in any of the training material I've
ever looked at. There tends to be instructions to the effect that no
specific formulaic approach is to be favored or penalized. In other
words, readers are not supposed to favor structures like the
five-paragraph essay over any logical organization.
Karl Hagen
Department of English
Mount St. Mary's College
PAUL E. DONIGER wrote:
Wow, Jan, aren't you glad NOT to have gone to that training? It's a
great lesson for students, isn't it? All they need to do is use lots
of transitions and not worry about accuracy or meaning. What a sad
state of things we have gotten into. No wonder so many arrive at
college unready for composition classes.
Feeling depressed,
Paul
*/Jan Kammert <[log in to unmask]>/* wrote:
>
> Check out this news. It would be funny if it weren't so true and
so sad!
Meaningful grades on essays that are read in 2-3 minutes? Bulk is
valued more
than content? Made up facts are good? WOW!!!!!
>
The assessment test that all students have to take in my state
includes an
essay. The people who read the essay are expected to spend about
that
much time on each essay. Although I have never gone to the
training (only
one person per school district is allowed to go per year), I have
been
told that the graders look mostly for transition words: "next"
"then"
"finally."
Jan
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