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How Writing Can Be Assessed On The Quality Of The Written Work

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Writing should be assessed on the quality of the written work. Usually it is, but the consideration of other factors—or the lack of consideration of other factors—often has an impact on the assessment. In these cases, the actual assessment does not simply reflect the quality of the work, but many other factors as well.
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In “The Literature of Direct Writing Assessment: Major Concerns and Prevailing Trends,” author Brian Huot outlines many of the issues that affect the assessment of quality in student writing. The long-standing issue with writing assessment is centered on the unlikelihood that different raters can assign the same rating to the same piece of writing. He cites a well-known example conducted in the early 1960s …show more content…

NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) has found this type of scoring to be effective in large-scale assessment scenarios (238). It can be performed rather quickly, which can be strength, as Huot identifies. He does not identify its weakness, however; because areas other than those being assessed are generally ignored, evaluators will not identify faults such as inaccuracy of content, flawed reasoning, and inappropriate voice. Analytic scoring requires an examination of a writing sample for specific qualities that are generally considered essential for writing to be “good.” Assessment is based on “how many good qualities it contains” (238). It will, therefore, identify errors that primary trait scoring will miss. Naturally, it takes longer because it focuses on higher-order concerns such as content, development, and persuasiveness. According to Huot’s research, analytic scores have been proven to be the most reliable direct writing procedure (238). Holistic scoring looks at the entire essay, like analytic scoring, but it is relatively quick, like trait scoring. Therefore, while analytic scoring is more accurate, holistic scoring is usually recommended for large testing populations (239). Holistic scoring looks at general characteristics and assigns a score according to a pre-assigned scale. Huot’s goal in his article is to explore the ways in which direct assessment can be influenced by examining

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