Chapter 6: Simple ways to assess the writing skills

Simple ways to assess the writing skills of students with learning disabilities

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);
• The degree to which the teacher actively monitors students' understanding and progress; and
• 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.

Process, product, and purpose

Curriculum-based assessment must start with an inspection of the curriculum. Many writing curricula are based on a conceptual model that takes into account process, product, and purpose. This conceptual model, therefore, forms the framework for the simple assessment techniques that follow.

Simple ways to assess the process

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.

Simple ways to assess the product

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.

Content

Content is the second factor to consider in the writing product. Content features include the composition's organization, cohesion, accuracy (in expository writing), and originality (in creative writing). General questions the classroom teacher can ask regarding a composition's organization include:

• Is there a good beginning sentence?
• Is there a clear ending?
• Is there a logical sequence of subtopics or events?
• Cohesion questions include:
• Does the writer stick to the topic?
• Is it clear what words like it, that, and they refer to?
• Does the writer use key words that cue the reader to the direction of the discourse (First… , Then… , Therefore… , On the other hand… )?
• Originality is assessed through questions like:
• Did the writer attempt humor?
• Did the writer present a unique point of view?

Analytical scales are the best way to lend some objectivity to evaluation of content. One can choose from a general rating scale, appropriate to almost any writing assignment, or one tailored to a specific genre or text structure. Spandel and Culham (1993) developed an analytical trait scoring guide for six aspects of writing, three of which address content: Ideas and content, organization, and voice. (Voice refers to the author's own unique personality, style, and honesty reflected in the writing.) Each of these traits is scored on a five-point scale. For example, organization is scored using the following guidelines:

• 5 The organization enhances and showcases the central idea or storyline. The order, structure or presentation of information is compelling and moves the reader through the text.
• 3 The organizational structure is strong enough to move the reader through the text without undue confusion
• 1 The writing lacks a clear sense of direction. Ideas, details or events seem strung together in a loose or random fashion-or else there is no identifiable internal structure. (Spandel & Culham, 1993)

To promote agreement between raters, each of the guidelines above is further defined by specific criteria (or rubrics). A rating of 3, for example, requires these attributes:

• The paper has a recognizable introduction and conclusion. The introduction may not create a strong sense of anticipation; the conclusion may not tie up all loose ends. Sequencing is usually logical, but may sometimes be so predictable that the structure takes attention away from the content.
• Pacing is fairly well controlled, though the writer sometimes spurts ahead too quickly or spends too much time on details that do not matter.
• Transitions often work well; at other times, connections between ideas are fuzzy.
• The organization sometimes supports the main point or storyline; at other times, the reader feels an urge to slip in a transition or move things around. (Spandel & Culham, 1993)

A composition that is somewhat better organized than described by the guidelines for 3 but does not quite fit the descriptors for 5 would receive a rating of 4. Similarly, a rating of 2 falls between the descriptors for 1 and 3.

Analytical scoring guidelines such as these are used in many state writing assessments. There are two limitations to scales such as these. First, teachers must spend many hours learning the rubrics and discussing student compositions in order to establish any degree of integrater reliability. Second, these scales may not be sensitive enough to measure growth in students with emerging literacy skills who are unable to achieve a rating above 1 or-at the most-2.

For many students, writing instruction begins with smaller units of discourse, such as a paragraph. Welch and Link (1992) recommended an informal paragraph assessment that focuses on each of a paragraph's three parts: topic sentence, supporting sentences, and clincher sentence (Figure 3). Each part can receive a point for its existence, its form (grammatical correctness), and its function (relevance to the topic). Both topic sentence and clincher sentence can earn only one point for each of the three criteria, but up to three supporting sentences can be scored for existence, form, and function. This scale could be used to evaluate almost any kind of paragraph.