On the Use of Composition Scoring Techniques, Objective Measures, and Objective Tests to Evaluate ESL Writing Ability

Abstract

The evaluation of writing ability among both L1 and L2 students has become increasingly important in recent years because the results of such evaluation are used for a variety of administrative, instructional, and research purposes. Classroom teachers, in particular, because they want to use these results to help improve, influence, refine, and shape their students' attained writing ability, have specific concerns regarding the various methods of writing assessment available. Additional concerns, especially of teachers, include the issue of whether the results of any one evaluation procedure are helpful to students and how they affect students' writing performance and attitudes. This article does not address the question of how best to use the results of a writing evaluation to improve student writing, but it does present a discussion of the efficacy of various direct and indirect methods of assessing writing ability. The purpose of this article is to outline the assumptions, procedures, and consequences for use of the principal direct scoring schemes and objective measures presently available for evaluating compositions, and of the objective tests currently utilized to determine (indirectly) students' ability to write. It is hoped that ESL professionals (whether they are teachers, administrators, or researchers) can make use of this discussion as they try to decide how best to handle questions related to writing ability. Although some readers may question the appropriateness of using indirect measures, such as standardized tests, since those only measure recognition of surface-level syntactic phenomena, the more widely used standardized tests have been included in this survey because they are used by a number of institutions as criterion measures as well as for placement and prediction.