Methods Used to Assess Learners Writing Ability - Assignment Example

Methods Used to Assess Learners Writing Ability Abstract The aassessment of writing has recently been under the focus of educators and testing experts as well as lawmakers particularly because students’ writing in various dicsciplines and level of education has continued to develop less proficiency. This paper presents and explains a number of testing approaches and how reliable they can be in giving feedback as far as assessing the writing skills of students is concerned. Keywords Testing; assessment; Indirect method; direct method; essay; multiple choice Introduction The idea of testing is among the key contributions that psychology has made to the society and tests that are developed cautiously act as a source of valuable information for making decisions in educational, clinical and a variety of other settings. As a result of their proven utility, tests as well as other standardized assessments are broadly applied in educational settings. To reap the potential benefits that are associated with tests, it is critical that they are understood completely and their strengths and weaknesses evaluated (Wall & Walz, 2004). Testing is a special way of collecting information that can be employed while making decisions about a person, a program or an organization and tests consist of items that prompt responses from a person. Testing does not comprise of the simple administration of a set of questions or tasks that have to be performed as the tests need to be scored and the results used for evaluation (Wall & Walz, 2004). Assessment methods Essay tests are usually considered to be more valid as compared to multiple-choice questions when measuring the writing ability of students as they have the ability of sampling a broader range of composition skills. On the other hand, variance in the scores associated with essay tests can demonstrate irrelevant factors like speed and fluency under the pressure of time or penmanship (Weigle, 2002). Multiple choice testing over-predicts the performance of minority students as far as essay testing is concerned and there is no certainty as to whether these tests have fundamentally equivalent predictive validity for candidates who are not in the same academic discipline where what they are supposed to write is not the same. The best tests that assess writing ability blend both essay and multiple-choice questions but this approach may be too expensive while the alternatives that may be relatively cheaper may have a compromising effect on the quality of the assessment. Direct methods Using direct methods of assessment as the only test of writing ability may be the most favourable to most of the teachers but it may be inadequate particularly if the testing program is large in size. Essay examinations may not be dependable enough to serve on their lonesome for arriving at important decisions about the individuals being assessed and a large group of students taking the test may increase the chances of unreliability (Frankland, 2007). The degree of reliability decreases when the assessment is given to a large group that is characterised by heterogeneous backgrounds as opposed to a smaller group that has a homogeneous. It decreases further if a variety of assessors have to be trained in the application of common standard while reading the papers. It further decreases for subjects that are less exact and more discursive such as general compositions and the achievement of a higher readability as a result of multiple readings does not ensure an increase in reliability (Mather, Wendling & Roberts, 2009). Direct methods of assessment address the skills and processes involved in writing which teachers think are the most critical attributes of writing and the focus of instructions. Indirect methods Psychometrically speaking, there is no indication that indirect testing alone can be able to achieve a satisfactory measure of writing skills as far as ranking and selection is concerned. There have been many persuasive arguments stating that indirect testing is insufficient in itself for purposes like monitoring the development of individual writers, measuring the effect of a new writing program or achieving a clear picture of a particular learner’s strengths and weaknesses. Using multiple-choice tests for writing assessments prompts strong objections since the tests reveal nothing concerning the writing ability a candidate possesses and it can easily be dealt with through citing research studies. No amount of multiple choice materials can stand in for a long and arduous practice taken in actual writing. There is also the fear that being preoccupied with the performance of students on tests narrows instruction as well as the goals that are suitable for the tests. Students are allowed to expect the coursework they go through to be preparation for them to do well in the areas where they will be assessed and teachers are obligated to ensure that students are well prepared (Lenski & Verbruggen, 2010). This blend of expectation and obligation goes a long way in guaranteeing that the assessment will have an effect on teaching processes as well as the writing curriculum. The processes involved in the evaluation of writing are supposed to be consistent with the best explanation of writing together with its teaching. Oddly, indirect methods of assessment may have an effect on the curriculum to its disadvantage since it provides an accurate measure of what it seems to desert. There is reason behind using multiple-choice tests than grading based on merely the length of essays but using objective tests widely may cause the classes to drift away from writing essays to an obsession of identifying sentence level structure that are isolated. Combined methods When used alone, essay tests as well as their objective counterparts have problems making it practical to provide the direct and indirect methods only of they relate in a modest way and each exercise assesses a distinct and considerable part (Bang, 2013). The two techniques evaluate at least one of equivalent performance attributes while simultaneously dealing with distinctive characteristics of writing style. Each of them avails slightly varying type of information concerning the ability of a student write in Standard English. It can therefore be concluded that the most effective predictor of a dependable and direct test of the ability to write is the one that blends essay questions with objective questions (Cooper, 1984). The dependability of the direct method can be improved by blending the essay score with the objective score to constitute on overall score for reporting. A good number of colleges utilize this technique since the direct method is not perceived as dependable enough for reporting (Cooper, 1984). Scores are reported by affording weights to the direct and indirect methods depending on the amount of testing linked with them. Scores can also be combined so that they are weighted by relative reliabilities in that dependable diagnostic sub-scores may be produced through the combination of part scores from indirect testing with the analytic scores from direct testing. References Bang, H. (2013). Reliability of National Writing Project’s Analytic Writing Continuum Assessment System. Journal Of Writing Assessment, 6(1). Cooper, P. (1984). The assessment of Writing Ability: A Review of Research. Graduate Record Examinations, 84(12). Frankland, S. (2007). Enhancing teaching and learning through assessment (1st ed.). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Lenski, S., & Verbruggen, F. (2010). Writing instruction and assessment for English language learners K-8 (1st ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Mather, N., Wendling, B., & Roberts, R. (2009). Writing assessment and instruction for students with learning disabilities (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Wall, J., & Walz, G. (2004). Measuring up (1st ed.). [Greensboro, NC]: CAPS Press. Weigle, S. (2002). Assessing writing (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read More