Assessing Writing

Summary

The video explores the complexities of writing, highlighting how it has evolved from traditional forms like letters to digital communication such as emails and social media posts. It delves into the cognitive processes involved in writing, such as planning, audience consideration, and grammar. The video also emphasizes the importance of thoughtful assessment when gauging writing ability, considering factors like task relevance, audience, and scoring methods. It concludes by discussing innovations in automated scoring systems, aiming for more accurate and fair evaluations of writing performance.

Takeaways

• 😀 Writing is a frequent activity for many people, whether it's for work, hobbies, or social media.
• 😀 Writing involves considering the topic, audience, structure, vocabulary, and grammatical accuracy.
• 😀 Writing is a complex process that goes from the brain to the hand, involving mental structuring and physical execution.
• 😀 Assessing someone's writing ability requires relevant and tailored tasks, not arbitrary assignments.
• 😀 Tasks should align with the context of the writer, such as avoiding business letter assignments for teenagers with no experience.
• 😀 To evaluate a learner's overall writing ability, a range of different writing tasks should be given.
• 😀 The length and type of writing tasks vary in difficulty, such as comparing a short note to a long essay.
• 😀 The audience plays a crucial role in determining the language and tone used in writing tasks.
• 😀 Writing assessments are typically scored on a rating scale, which can be holistic or analytic.
• 😀 Recent innovations in writing assessment include the use of computer scoring systems to assist human raters.
• 😀 Although assessing writing seems simple, it is more complex, especially when considering appropriate scoring and task design.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the video script?

The main focus of the video script is to explore the complexities involved in assessing writing ability, discussing the different types of writing tasks, the considerations for evaluating them, and the methods used for scoring.

How has the nature of writing tasks changed in recent years?

The nature of writing tasks has changed with the advent of digital communication. While letter writing has declined, people now write emails, texts, and social media posts much more frequently.

What are some of the key considerations when writing something?

When writing, key considerations include thinking about the topic, the message’s structure, the audience, vocabulary, and ensuring grammatical accuracy so that the reader can easily understand the content.

Why is it important to choose the right writing task for assessment?

Choosing the right writing task is crucial because it ensures that the task is relevant to the decisions we plan to make about the person’s writing ability, avoiding unfair assessments based on unrelated factors like lack of experience in a specific type of writing.

What types of writing tasks are suggested for evaluating overall writing ability?

To evaluate overall writing ability, it is important to ask learners to write a variety of different types of tasks, as real-world writing involves different forms and skills depending on the context and purpose.

How does the amount of writing affect the difficulty of a task?

The amount of writing required can impact the task’s difficulty. For instance, writing a short note is generally much easier than writing a lengthy essay.

What role does the audience play in writing tasks?

The audience plays a significant role in writing because it determines the tone, vocabulary, and structure of the message. For example, writing to a friend is much more casual compared to writing to a boss.

What are the two main types of rating scales used for scoring writing?

The two main types of rating scales for scoring writing are global (or holistic), which assigns a single grade or score, and analytic, which provides separate scores for different aspects of writing, such as grammatical accuracy or vocabulary range.

Why is it important to align rating scales with the type of writing being assessed?

It’s important to align rating scales with the type of writing being assessed to ensure fairness and relevance. For example, a personal email may not require precise language, so focusing on grammatical accuracy in such writing could lead to an unfair score.

What recent developments have been made in the field of writing assessment?

Recent developments in writing assessment include the use of computer scoring programs by exam boards to complement human raters, offering the potential for more widespread use of automated scoring in the future.