A questionnaire on the measurement of apprehension about writing was given to 1,257 students enrolled in their first college course in composition. Scores on the questionnaire did not correlate well with a measure of performance, grades in the composition course. A general measure of verbal facility and skills, Composite American College Test scores, correlated well with grades. These findings raise questions about what is measured by the questionnaire and suggest that achievement in writing depends more heavily on verbal skills than on apprehension about writing.
The reading passages from the Minnesota Scholastic Aptitude Test were removed from the test booklet and the 30 remaining comprehension questions administered to two adult populations, 101 college freshmen and 17 college faculty. In their answers to these passageless reading comprehension questions, both groups scored better than chance. Comparison of faculty with freshman scores suggested- the hypothesis that verbal skills may be a prominent factor in this task. Correlations of freshman scores on the passageless Minnesota Scholastic Aptitude Test with other measures of their verbal skills were moderately high and significant. Analysis of the test items provided further corroboration of the hypothesis.
Thirty-four tests measuring verbal ability, academic achievement, reading skills, attitudes, visual perception, spelling, and word decoding skills were compared for their correlational strengths with grade in a required freshman course in composition. In several modes of analysis scores from the English subtest of the ACT Assessment yielded the strongest and most pervasive relationship to composition grades. Several other language tests showed varying power to discriminate between groups of students with high, middle, or low grades in the composition course, but a strong correlation between scores measuring word-level skills and grade in freshman course in composition suggests their unique potential in test batteries designed for the differential placement of students into English composition courses.
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