Despite national efforts to accelerate students through precollegiate writing course sequences to transfer-level composition, questions persist regarding appropriate placement and the support needed for students to succeed. An analytical text-based writing assessment was administered to students across four levels of composition courses at a California community college. Differences in student writing scores between course levels and the relationship between writing score, course level, and high school GPA were examined. Key findings include (1) significant differences in average scores between the first precollegiate course and other courses in the sequence and (2) weak relationships between course level and high school GPA and assessment scores and high school GPA.

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Books reviewed: Assessing and Improving Student Writing in College: A Guide for Institutions, General Education, Departments, and Classrooms

This essay provides a comparative analysis of a large number of texts devoted to writing assessment, analyses that help answer questions about writing assessment volumes and that provide a picture of writing assessment scholarship over a twenty-five-year period.

This essay provides a comparative analysis of a large number of texts devoted to writing assessment, analyses that help answer questions about writing assessment volumes and that provide a picture of writing assessment scholarship over a twenty-five-year period.

The Inquiry column is about the scholarship of teaching and learning.

This essay chronicles an English department overhauling its rubric design, curriculum, and portfolio in order to emphasize a wider range of “real-world” writing.

An outcomes assessment project we conducted at our open admissions institution turned out to be considerably more enjoyable and worthwhile than we anticipated.

This article explores the use of scoring rubrics in the context of deteriorating material conditions of writing instruction.

In this study, we compared self-revised essays to timed writing exams written by students in a developmental English course in a community college. Using a multiple-trait rubric, we found that self-revised essays showed greater elaboration than timed writing exams, and that elaboration and focus correlated only for self-revised essays. We argue, based on these findings and on theoretical grounds, for further exploration of the self-revised essay as an authentic portrait of student writing ability.

Three approaches—engaging first-year writers in naming strengths and weaker areas, determining descriptors that fit their various compositions, and applying a rubric that details all the grade-determinant components—serve to give students the vocabulary they need to wrap their voices around words and to describe their learning.

Discusses how current scholarship argues against one-shot, high-stakes writing tasks. Presents work from students that were part of a team-taught curriculum that coordinated writing and reading classes. Designs activities that would provide a core of material for students to draw on in their final testing situations.

Describes computer-software programs that “read” and score college-placement essays. Argues they may impress administrators, but they also (1) marginalize students by disregarding what they have to say; (2) disregard decades of research on the writing process; and (3) ignore faculty’s professional expertise. Argues assessment practices should be guided by theoretical soundness and sensitivity to issues affecting real people.

Shares freshman-composition students’ stories about portfolio assessment (interviewing students at length three times during the semester), to examine ways students understand portfolios, how portfolios work, and why sometimes they do not. Suggests concerns relevant to implementing department-wide competency portfolios. Argues that community colleges may be better situated than large universities to reap the benefits of portfolios.

Investigates English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students’ native literacy-learning experiences, via written learning autobiographies of 26 students from at least eight different countries. Discusses writing instruction in students’ native languages; most satisfying writing assessment in their native languages; and differences between writing in their native language and English. Draws five conclusions for ESL instruction.

Describes how a weekly focused journal writing assessment (in which students note any use of language they find interesting, puzzling, amusing, or annoying as well as their response to it) enhances composition students’ awareness of how language is used and where. Offers several different advantages of such journal writing.

Explores issues, problems, and procedures involved in large English departments which use portfolio assessment and where part-timers and full-timers need to collaborate in this process. Offers recommendations involving the relationship of part-time and full-time teachers in such programs.

Asks if there is a place for portfolio assessment in the literature classroom. Finds that portfolios help students use writing to engage literary texts in multiple and productive ways, and offer opportunities to examine effects of the reading process over the course of the writing pieces. Argues for a particular kind of portfolio focusing on a single literary work.

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