This article attempts to describe the condition of direct writing assessment literature. Instead of focusing on a particular assessment concept, issue or methodology, this review reflects the concerns evident within the bulk of work done on writing assessment since its adoption during the last fifteen years. The purpose of this work is to provide an overall sense of how assessment research defines the important issues and creates the trends that seek to inform efficient and accurate writing assessment procedures. Focusing on topic selection and task development, the relationship between textual features and quality ratings, and the influences upon raters’ judgments of writing quality, this essay presents direct writing assessment’s own preoccupations and concerns. The center of attention is not only on how direct evaluation has progressed but where it is heading. This large picture of direct writing assessment, available through an examination of its literature, is important to an understanding of direct ...

The Literature of Direct Writing Assessment: Major Concerns and Prevailing Trends

Talking to Students: Metadiscourse in IntroductoryCoursebooks

Peer review of writing provides an alternative to the traditional approach of practicing writing with feedback from an instructor. Most of the limited research on peer review has examined the general effects or focused on the effects of receiving feedback from peers. The current study focused on the effects of giving feedback, that is, on whether students learn to write better by reviewing peer writing. Sixty-one undergraduate students were randomly assigned to reviewing, reading, or no-treatment control conditions. Reviewers rated and commented on papers written by peers. Readers read the same papers without commenting. All students then wrote a paper in the same genre but on a different topic. Students in the reviewing condition significantly outperformed those in both other conditions on the quality of the report. Follow-up analysis indicated that comments coded as "problem detection" and "solution suggestion" were positively correlated with writing outcomes for students in the reviewing condition. This research provides support for the use of peer review of writing as a learning activity

Learning by reviewing.

To assess progress in understanding text revision, we review research reported since 1980, when process analyses of writing were beginning (Fitzgerald, 1987). A modernized version of the revision model by Flower, Hayes, Carey, Schriver, and Stratman (1986) was used to organize findings about how revision is influenced by environmentally posed rhetorical problems and actual text variables; by cognitive knowledge, strategies, and representations of the text being revised; by metacognitive understanding, monitoring, and control of knowledge and strategies; by interactions among these environmental, cognitive, and metacognitive influences; and by how working memory limits those interactive influences. These influences have been studied with a rich diversity of research approaches, and even though no part of the modernized model has been studied fully, and even though interactions of the model's parts have been examined minimally, clearly interpretable results have been reported about all of the model's parts. Substantial and encouraging progress has been made toward understanding text revision, and the stage has been set for more progress. We suggest investigations to increase understanding of revision and to promote integration of research and theory about reading and writing.

Environmental, cognitive, and metacognitive influences on text revision: Assessing the evidence

Both research in the field of writing and writing pedagogy have been built to a large extent on the premise that, as a fundamental discourse process, writing has critical connections to speaking. What those connections are has been debated by both researchers and teachers. This article reviews writing research that implicates writing-speaking relationships by constructing two contrasting positions for organizing the research and understanding the relationships: (a) that writing differs from speaking, and (b) that writing is similar to speaking. Research issues regarding integrating these positions are raised, and on the basis of the review a guideline is offered for future writing research, implicating the field of writing in concerns about teaching and learning in different academic and sociocultural contexts.

Revisiting the Writing-Speaking Connection: Challenges for Research on Writing and Writing Instruction:

This study investigated the effects of assigning an audience on undergraduates' attitudes, composing strategies, and persuasive writing. Eighty-seven students in an intermediate composition course took a writing pretest without an assigned audience. Then, they were randomly assigned to three posttest conditions: (a) imaginary assigned reader, (b) real assigned reader, and (c) no assigned reader. For all participants the posttest was a second draft about the pretest topic. When the assigned reader and English teachers rated the essays for persuasiveness, assigning an audience had a limited effect on the assigned reader's scores and no significant effect on the teachers' scores. However, analyses of questionnaire and interview data indicated that assigning an audience increased students' interest, effort, and use of audience-based strategies. In addition, the questionnaires revealed an audience effect across groups. That is, students who said they had thought of someone like the assigned reader were twice as likely to persuade the assigned reader as students who had not. Studies suggest that most secondary and college students are not adapting their writing to audiences beyond the classroom (Applebee, 1981; Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod, & Rosen, 1975; Cooper, 1984; NAEP, 1985, 1986). Some researchers have attributed this problem to a deficiency in students' (a) cognitive development (Lunsford, 1979; Moffett, 1968; Shaughnessy, 1977), (b) knowledge of text conventions (Dillon, 1981; Park, 1982, 1986), or (c) coordination of composing demands (Bereiter, 1980; Kroll, 1984; Scardamalia, 1981). While acknowledging these deficiencies, other researchers have argued that the school context also contributes to the problem (Applebee, 1981; Collins & Williamson, 1984). The studies cited above indicate that most school writing addresses overhearers teachers who are not personally involved with the topic. In contrast, most on-the-job writing addresses rhetorical audiences (see Anderson, 1985). According to Bitzer (1971), a rheThis article is based on the first author's doctoral dissertation (University of Maryland, 1987). The research was supported by a fellowship from the United Negro College Fund and by a grant from the University of Maryland, College Park. Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 23, No. 1, February 1989

W Slater

Papers

The effect of audience specification on undergraduates: attitude, strategies, and writing