Writing Assessment Overview

Writing and Linguistics Department Georgia Southern University

Performance in English 1101 and 1102

A final course grade in English 1101 or 1102 may rest on many aspects of student performance, primary among them, of course, the written products submitted. Other important aspects of performance include

• reaching for and grappling with complex ideas through talking, listening, reading, and writing, both formally and informally;
• engaging seriously in draft writing;
• giving and receiving constructive criticism (in peer response, for example); and
• contributing to the community of learners in the class.

Expectations and Responsibilities

All first-year writing courses in the Writing and Linguistics Department are committed to the Course Outcomes, but in relation to these outcomes the means by which student writing is evaluated are complex and multifaceted. The criteria that matter most for any particular assignment are determined by a combination of some or all of the following:

• the teacher's goals for the particular assignment and its place in the overall progression of a course;
• the preliminary tasks leading up to the final text, such as exploratory writing or collaborative brainstorming;
• the kind of writing assigned; and
• the nature of grading appropriate to a portfolio, a sequence of assignments, or a stand-alone text.

Each teacher is responsible for making clear to students the criteria by which assignments are evaluated. Teachers may do so in a variety of ways. For example, the course syllabus or other handouts may include evaluation criteria, outcomes statements, generalized grading criteria sheets, or other such rubrics. In conjunction with each assignment, faculty may articulate individual evaluation criteria. And evaluation criteria may be articulated through assessment strategies that faculty teach in class, perhaps during peer response or related activities.

Evaluation of Student Writing

Perhaps the most familiar criteria on which a piece of writing is evaluated are the traditional, rhetorical ones:

Judging any given piece of writing typically takes into account all these categories but the interplay among them differs from one text to the next. For example, one piece of writing might be "satisfactory" in all the above categories, but another equally "satisfactory" example might show excellence in some categories, weakness in one, and average quality in the remainder. While these categories certainly figure significantly in the evaluation of college writing, a few additional points about writing assessment are also important to understand.

Not all writing assignments necessarily emphasize all criteria. For example, the final assessment of:

• An annotated bibliography or a letter assignment may stress conventions of document format.
• A summary or sensory description may stress the accuracy of content or detail.
• A reflective essay or theoretical analysis may stress the richness of idea-development.
• An executive summary may stress the crispness of thesis and support.
• A web page or document with tables may stress the features of a particular technology used to produce the text.
• A journal or response to readings may stress the difficult process of thinking critically and analytically.

In addition, teachers' goals for the same assignment may emphasize different aspects of the text. For example, a teacher may, because of the course goals and progression of assignments, need to evaluate a letter for its idea-richness primarily rather than its format. Or the teacher may choose to grade one letter assignment for its idea-richness and a second for its structure and format.

Fairness

In comparison to the score on a multiple choice test, the grade on a piece of writing may appear to be "subjective," but in fact responsible grading is far from arbitrary or idiosyncratic. Even a group of very different writing teachers will reach significant consensus on a grade as long as they understand the full context of the assignment that prompted the writing--its goals, its design, its place in a sequence of assignments, its place in the writer's development, and so on.

Grading in writing classes rests on complex processes, but the goal of this document and other related ones is to help clarify the process for students and others who have a stake in writing assessment at Georgia Southern University.