Research in the Teaching of English Jan 1977

An Analysis of Readers’ Responses to Essays

Ellen W. Nold Stanford University ; Sarah Freedman

Abstract

Judging student writing is a difficult, time consuming task for both the classroom teacher and the researcher. Criteria of excellence for compositions remain ill-defined. This study is designed to define some easily measurable syntactic and semantic cues within student essays that predict and perhaps determine readers' responses, thereby facilitating the evaluators' task. In searching for the covert, quantifiable written cues that correlate with reader response, we rely on frequency counts to, as Braddock advises in Research in Written Composition, discover certain key situations which are indices of larger areas of (21) . Our larger area of concern consists of defining the basis for, or at least some predictors of, reader response.

Journal
Research in the Teaching of English
Published
1977-01-01
DOI
10.58680/rte197719983
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
teacher development
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (7)

  1. Wu (2013)
    Native and non-native students’ interaction with a text-based prompt
    Assessing Writing
  2. Camp (2012)
    The psychology of writing development—And its implications for assessment
    Assessing Writing
  3. MATHISON (1996)
    Writing the Critique, a Text about a Text
    Written Communication
  4. Roy (1992)
    Evaluating placement exams with a structured decision system
    Computers and Composition
  5. DURST et al. (1990)
    Appealing Texts: The Persuasive Writing of High School Students
    Written Communication
Show all 7 →
  1. Reid et al. (1986)
    Writer's workbench analysis of holistically scored essays
    Computers and Composition
  2. RAFOTH et al. (1984)
    The Impact of Content and Mechanics on Judgments of Writing Quality
    Written Communication

References (0)

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